Incubator sharpens focus on innovation

Three Chinese incubators and two foreign companies agreed to establish an international business incubator in Beijing, as part of their effort to transform existing technologies and effect technology transfers.

Their new venture, Beijing International Co-Incubation, aims to provide monetary and technical support, as well as international market opportunities, for companies from Canada, South Korea and China.

It was jointly established by China International Economic Cooperation and Investment Inc, Beijing Zoom Technology Incubator Co Ltd, 898 InnoSpace, the Ontario Science Center and Zeta Plan Investment Co Ltd.

"Universities and research institutes generate innovation while the market brings entrepreneurship. Technology transfer is the integration of scientific achievements and entrepreneurial resources," said Chen Dongmin, former director of the Office of Science and Technology Development at Peking University. He was speaking at a seminar.

"Since innovative ideas can be introduced, there is no national boundary for this integration," Chen said. "Incubators play an important role in the process since they provide a space to reach consensus on the commercial environment, culture, protection of IP (intellectual property) and the enterprise's credit in different countries."

Beijing Zoom Technology Incubator Co Ltd, one of the founders of Beijing International Co-Incubation, introduced overseas technologies and applied them in different industries, which Chen believes is a good example for incubators to follow.

The company had three incubators in China, 10 overseas offices in Silicon Valley, Boston, Tel Aviv, and Berlin, and hardware accelerators to serve Sino-US and Sino-Italian technology transfers, according to Sang Chunhua, CEO of Zoom Technology Incubator.

"We need to find new growth points to pursue further development, while lack of innovation is one of the biggest challenges we may face in the next five years," Zhou Tianyong, an economics researcher at the Party School of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said in his remarks while launching the book The Revolution of Growth.

The State Council released a plan to promote the commercialization of research findings in May 2016. According to the plan, it expects to build 100 national technology transfer institutes and 10 demonstration regions for the commercialization of research findings, and cultivate 10,000 professional intermediary agents for technology transfers.

Chris Cheung, director of the EUSME Center, said European small and medium-sized enterprises show great interest in China.

Cheung said: "A Chinese company invested 10 million euros ($10.63 million) to found a joint venture with a Slovenian company that focuses on technological innovation in electric automobile engines. A Spanish company asked about the price of technology transfer for its controlling software for wind power generation factories. And a Germany enterprise is looking for customers in Chinese coal and electricity plants to apply their emission reduction technology."

Zheng Yiran and Xu He contributed to this story.