Professor Xiaolan Fu recently spoke to more than 3,000 business people from small and medium Enterprises (SME) at the Alibaba Global SME Business Summit which took place in Hangzhou, China on 2 April 2018. Her presentation focused on China’s path to innovation. She argued that open national innovation system in a large open economy is key to innovation. She highlighted China’s integrated dual system of indigenous innovation and external knowledge, resources and markets which play an important role in Chinese innovation. According to her, there are multiple driving forces that influence innovation. They include the state, the private sector and global forces at different stages of the innovation chain and sector.

She noted that the world economy is at a crossroad in the age of the fourth industrial revolution and there are opportunities and challenges for SMEs. According to her, it is therefore incumbent on SMEs to find their own unique product in the future industry. She advised that with perseverance, they can get to the top of the mountain. She stressed that in a small distributed and decentralised economic model, small is beautiful and small is the trend. She concluded by encouraging entrepreneurs to be persistent and forge collaborations and networks with others in order for them to achieve a greater global impact.

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