Innovation rules as world's best, brightest gather in Chengdu

The future will be the exciting topic as global innovators and entrepreneurs swap ideas at major fair

The 2016 Chengdu Global Innovation and Entrepreneurship Fair opens on Friday in Chengdu, a mega city in western China. The fair will feature international, high-end and all-round companies.

The event will attract more than 500 participants this year from China and abroad, including government leaders, representatives from Chengdu's sister cities, Nobel Prize winners, world-renowned scientists, university presidents, and world-famous entrepreneurs and investors.

The fair aims to become an international platform that gathers innovation and entrepreneurship resources and achievements from around the world and promotes the exchange and transaction of innovative ideas and achievements, said a spokesman of Chengdu.

The three-day event will include 18 major activities: 12 high-level forums that will focus on development trends in innovation and entrepreneurship, an exhibition that will display the world's latest scientific and technological achievements, three trade fairs for innovation and entrepreneurship resources, and two innovation and entrepreneurship contests, according to the spokesman.

The fair's opening ceremony, held together with the launch of the China-US Young Makers Competition, invites mayors of the world's popular entrepreneurial cities, renowned entrepreneurs, and representatives from top business incubators, high-tech zones and universities, to discuss the latest achievements in innovation, exchange innovative ideas, and look into the future of innovation and entrepreneurship.

The Future Technologies Forum will invite top scientists from China and abroad in such fields as semiconductor lighting, fundamental particles, artificial intelligence and astrophysics, to discuss frontier science and technology.

Lu Tiecheng, director of Chengdu Science and Technology Bureau, said the scientists will include Shuji Nakamura, Nobel laureate for physics in 2014, Arthur B. McDonald, Nobel laureate for physics in 2015, Wu Hequan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and professor Chen Yanbei from the California Institute of Technology.

Lu said the Innovation Capital, Capital Innovation Forum will invite Edmund Phelps, winner of the Nobel Prize for economics in 2006, and top investors to share their investment philosophies, experiences and the latest trends in investment.

Chen Fu, deputy director of the Chengdu Investment Promotion Commission, said Chengdu is the first Chinese city to hold the Silicon Valley Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum, or the SVIEF, which is an annual international high-tech conference designed to foster talent, and exchange of technology and capital between the United States and nations in the Asia-Pacific region.

The past four SVIEFs have been held in Silicon Valley, California. The forum in Chengdu will involve 400 participants, including 89 senior technicians and executives from the US.

The 2016 Chengdu Global Innovation and Entrepreneurship exhibition covers an area of 15,000 square meters and has attracted 300 exhibitors. Some 51 high-tech innovation programs from Silicon Valley covering fields such as intelligent hardware, robots, 3-D printing and mobile internet will be on display at the exhibition.

Visitors will be able to see the latest innovative products, such as pneumatic tubes, the Lytro Illum light-field camera and the Lily Drone.

Three fairs will explore the exchange of talent, equity investment and technological achievements. The Talent Exchange Fair will involve 70 Fortune 500 companies, leading head-hunting companies, top local enterprises, scientific research teams and universities, all with the aim of promoting the exchange of top-level talents.

The two international contests are the China-US Young Makers Competition's Chengdu sub-contest and the China-ROK Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Contest. Both are expected to foster exchanges and cooperation in innovation and entrepreneurship between China and other countries.

The former is expected to draw 300 competitors, while 16 entrepreneurial teams (or companies) from China and South Korea will participate in the latter.

2015 fair

The 2015 Chengdu Global Innovation and Entrepreneurship Fair, which ran from Nov 9 to 11, drew more than 200 delegates from 30 countries and regions. It is believed to have been the first of its kind in China to focus on innovation and entrepreneurship.

The event consisted of five forums, four trade fairs and one contest.

During the fair, delegates reached the so-called Chengdu Consensus, which states that innovation and entrepreneurship are integral to the development of society and a powerful engine for economic development.

The Chengdu Global Innovation and Entrepreneurship Trading Platform was launched to provide entrepreneurs from the host city and around the world with services such as the transaction and exchange of equity, products, talent and resources.

More than 150 investment organizations took part in the roadshow and trade fair that followed, which involved 2,686 entrepreneurship programs.

Some 109 deals worth 5.32 billion yuan ($830 million) were signed during the two events.

The Chengdu Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone signed a memorandum of understanding with five companies and organizations from the European Union, according to which both sides will promote collaboration and exchanges in innovation, trade and investment among small and medium-sized enterprises, universities and high-tech parks in western China and the EU.

Carmen Cano de Lasala, deputy head of the EU delegation to China, said she had been to Chengdu nine times since 2006 and was impressed by the dynamic, open city and the development it has gone through in recent years.

"Chengdu is one of the most dynamic and fastest-growing cities in China. I'm glad to see so many European companies choosing Chengdu as their top investment destination and achieving great development here," she said.

Alvaro Simon De Blas, rotating president of EBN, a network of about 150 quality-certified EU business and innovation centers and other organizations that support innovative entrepreneurs, startups and SMEs, said Chengdu is attractive to EBN members because of its long and good relationship with the EU and excellent environment for innovation and entrepreneurship.

"Chengdu has a very bright future in terms of innovation and the development of SMEs. I believe more academicians, researchers, entrepreneurs and creative ideas will gather in Chengdu to create more wealth and job opportunities," he said.

Backed by the fair, Chengdu saw great achievements in innovation and entrepreneurship. About 249,000 businesses registered in Chengdu in 2015, of which 11,000 were technology enterprises.

The newly registered capital in 2015 totaled 650 billion yuan, an increase of 103 percent. Both the number of newly registered businesses and their total registered capital were the highest in central and western China.

Contact the writers at liyu@chinadaily.com.cn and pengchao@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 06/24/2016 page6)