A European hardware team that needs a different connector places an order and waits. In Shenzhen the same question is a short trip, three samples in hand the same afternoon, and a decision before the end of the day. Repeat that fifty times across a development cycle and the schedules diverge enormously.
Density, not talent
The advantage is geographic. Component markets, tooling shops, PCB houses, assembly lines and the people who know all of them sit within a short radius. Iteration is cheap where the supply chain is dense — that is the whole mechanism.
What it means for a European project
- Front-load the questions you can only answer on the ground, and answer them in one trip.
- Do not import the European cadence of one revision per month; it wastes the advantage.
- Decide in advance what you will not change, or fast iteration becomes endless iteration.
Speed is not automatically an advantage. A team without a frozen specification will iterate quickly in circles — and pay for every loop.