Czech Business Weekly interviewed Jan Muehfeit, Microsoft's vice president for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa and published some of the interview here: Technology without boundaries. There are several comparisons made between the US and Europe/Asia...and some of the quotes from the article are worth further exploration:
The memorization-based learning comment jumped off the page at me. Food for thought...In China and India, every year, half a million software engineers graduate, and 25 percent of India’s gross domestic product comes from information technology and software [production]. As India’s vice minister for IT said, India missed out on the industrial revolution but will not miss out on the digital one. In other European countries, memorization-based learning has not been reformed in the last 50 years. Life and business is about making mistakes, and making mistakes in these educational systems does not teach kids how to start again. (a particular reference to attitudes toward bankruptcy) There are about 100,000 IT jobs in the Czech Republic, and about half are connected with Microsoft software. I believe the open-source approach is nonsense. If there is no protection of intellectual property, an invention made in Europe will be immediately [co-opted] by India and China, where Europe cannot compete in terms of production volume and price. In the U.S., 40 percent of students are foreign; in Europe it is 1 percent. The blending of cultures is something Europe lacks.