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Will the cure for autism be discovered in China? A decade ago this would have been a preposterous question. But today people such as Wang Jian, a genetic researcher with a liking for cargo pants, believe the answer could be yes.
Mr Wang is a co-founder of BGI, the worlds biggest genetic sequencing company. Originally the Beijing Genomics Institute, the company ac*counts for 50 per cent of global gen*etic sequencing capacity and has al*ready mapped out genomes for cancer cells, plants, insects, hum*ans and even the giant panda. Its researchers have also gained an international reputation by pumping out hundreds of peer-reviewed articles a year.
BGI is emblematic of a wider trend among Chinese companies: a shift to compete through innovation and counter Chinas reputation as a copycat manufacturer of cheap products.
The country was once an innovation superpower both gunpowder and the compass were invented by Chinese. Today, however, it is moving only slowly towards regaining that status, after a century in which scientific and research establishments were buffeted by political upheaval.
It has not been easy, and business leaders and officials routinely lament Chinas lack of innovation. Our ability to copy is far greater than our originality, Zhang Xin, chief ex*ecutive of real estate group Soho, told a panel discussion. The society we live in needs original things badly.
Policy makers in Beijing have been throwing money and supportive policies at the problem. Last year Chinas research and development spending, both public and private, hit Rmb1tn ($159bn), and is growing at about 20 per cent a year.
They have also set targets for new patent filings in each province. New patents filed in China have quintupled in the past decade although scientists say most are worthless because the filing process lacks rigour.
BGIs strategy is unorthodox for a Chinese company. It was based in Beijing under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the state-run research institution. But Mr Wang says BGI got kicked out and relocated to Shenzhen, the manufacturing hub thous*ands of miles away. This has al*lowed BGI, owned by a mix of employees and investors, to pursue an independent research agenda. It partners with dozens of global res*earch institutions, such as the Gates Foundation, GE Healthcare and Aut*ism Speaks, with which BGI is work*ing to catalogue the genes of more than 2,000 families with autistic children.
BGI is also expanding its global reach, and last year acquired US se*quencing company Complete Genomics, giving it access to sequencing machine technology. Its goal is to bring the cost of genetic testing below $1,000 per person cheap enough to incorporate into regular medical care.
The advantage for companies pursuing innovation in China is the abundance of young, relatively cheap, talent. But the challenge is to hire those who have both creativity and laboratory expertise when the education system, with its intense em*phasis on rote learning, does not encourage in*depen*dent thinking.
So BGI looks for recruits slightly outside the norm and plucks promising young researchers from college be*fore they graduate. In China, where children are told from birth that they must earn a university degree, this is radical. I tell them, Come work for us and become world-class, why go back to school? There is no need to sit in class and listen to a stupid professor, Mr Wang grins.
He cites Wang Jun (not related), who dropped out of Peking University to join BGI. The science journal Nature last month named the gen*ome juggernaut as one of its 10 scientists who mattered in 2012.
BGI is not alone in its quest for innovation. In technology, the runaway success of apps such as WeChat, the popular messaging service developed by TenCent that features voice messaging, proves China is no longer just copying. In gaming, Five Minutes Happy Farm went viral before Zyngas FarmVille.
The intense competition in the Chinese internet market has produced other innovations, such as the microblogging platform Weibo, which was developed by Sina and has a wider range of functions than its US equivalent, Twitter (the two are not direct rivals, however, as Twitter is blocked in China). Online shopping platforms, such as Taobao, developed by Alibaba, have also broken new ground, especially in mobile shopping through smartphone apps.
In consumer goods, Chinese companies such as Haier, which makes household appliances, are bec*oming more innovative as they look for an edge outside their home market.
At Baidu, Chinas biggest search engine, with a more than 70 per cent market share, executives also say that recruitment is the biggest challenge. We are in a fast-changing industry that requires innovation and breakthrough products, says Lee Liu, vice-president of human resources.
When Baidu was founded more than a decade ago, critics made much of the fact that its minimalist homepage strongly resembled Googles. But Baidu has taken search in some new directions, for example, with its box computing search approach that includes applications, information and games instead of only web pages. It also has an extensive facial recognition image search, where users can upload pictures that will be compared with faces in Baidus database.
Baidu looks for recruits at Chinese universities and hires more graduates from Tsinghua University and Peking University, the top two schools, than any other big company. Mr Lee says the company looks for innovative recruits through programming competitions and relationships with professors. It is not just seeking students who rank highly academically.
Baidu then encourages innovation with the annual One Million Dollar competition, in which the team that comes up with the most innovative product is awarded $1m in equity in the company. The focus on innovation is such that last year Robin Li, Baidus founder, told his staff to be more like wolves aggressive and creative. Otherwise, he warned, they risked becoming dinosaurs.
China wakes up to innovation - FT.com
The world is coming
In the past two years, China has become a hotspot for research and development facilities. Multinational companies are rapidly boosting their facilities there, drawn by the relatively cheap talent and the lure of being closer to Asian customers.
Max von Zedtwitz, professor of strategy and innovation at Tongji University, Shanghai, says: “The opportunity to be closer to the market and respond to customers better has drawn multinationals to set up research programmes here because China is an increasingly important market.”
Protecting intellectual property remains a concern, he says, but he adds that protections are improving.
In November PepsiCo opened its largest research centre outside the US in Shanghai, where the focus will be on designing foods for Asian tastes. These include Quaker congee or Lay’s hot and sour fish soup flavoured crisps.
GM has also established a research centre that will work on a range of projects, such as electric vehicles and fuel economy. As John Du, director of the centre, pointed out, China produces more science and engineering graduates than the US, Japan and Germany combined.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3d97c42e-7200-11e2-886e-00144feab49a.html#axzz2KcirdfMo
Mr Wang is a co-founder of BGI, the worlds biggest genetic sequencing company. Originally the Beijing Genomics Institute, the company ac*counts for 50 per cent of global gen*etic sequencing capacity and has al*ready mapped out genomes for cancer cells, plants, insects, hum*ans and even the giant panda. Its researchers have also gained an international reputation by pumping out hundreds of peer-reviewed articles a year.
BGI is emblematic of a wider trend among Chinese companies: a shift to compete through innovation and counter Chinas reputation as a copycat manufacturer of cheap products.
The country was once an innovation superpower both gunpowder and the compass were invented by Chinese. Today, however, it is moving only slowly towards regaining that status, after a century in which scientific and research establishments were buffeted by political upheaval.
It has not been easy, and business leaders and officials routinely lament Chinas lack of innovation. Our ability to copy is far greater than our originality, Zhang Xin, chief ex*ecutive of real estate group Soho, told a panel discussion. The society we live in needs original things badly.
Policy makers in Beijing have been throwing money and supportive policies at the problem. Last year Chinas research and development spending, both public and private, hit Rmb1tn ($159bn), and is growing at about 20 per cent a year.
They have also set targets for new patent filings in each province. New patents filed in China have quintupled in the past decade although scientists say most are worthless because the filing process lacks rigour.
BGIs strategy is unorthodox for a Chinese company. It was based in Beijing under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the state-run research institution. But Mr Wang says BGI got kicked out and relocated to Shenzhen, the manufacturing hub thous*ands of miles away. This has al*lowed BGI, owned by a mix of employees and investors, to pursue an independent research agenda. It partners with dozens of global res*earch institutions, such as the Gates Foundation, GE Healthcare and Aut*ism Speaks, with which BGI is work*ing to catalogue the genes of more than 2,000 families with autistic children.
BGI is also expanding its global reach, and last year acquired US se*quencing company Complete Genomics, giving it access to sequencing machine technology. Its goal is to bring the cost of genetic testing below $1,000 per person cheap enough to incorporate into regular medical care.
The advantage for companies pursuing innovation in China is the abundance of young, relatively cheap, talent. But the challenge is to hire those who have both creativity and laboratory expertise when the education system, with its intense em*phasis on rote learning, does not encourage in*depen*dent thinking.
So BGI looks for recruits slightly outside the norm and plucks promising young researchers from college be*fore they graduate. In China, where children are told from birth that they must earn a university degree, this is radical. I tell them, Come work for us and become world-class, why go back to school? There is no need to sit in class and listen to a stupid professor, Mr Wang grins.
He cites Wang Jun (not related), who dropped out of Peking University to join BGI. The science journal Nature last month named the gen*ome juggernaut as one of its 10 scientists who mattered in 2012.
BGI is not alone in its quest for innovation. In technology, the runaway success of apps such as WeChat, the popular messaging service developed by TenCent that features voice messaging, proves China is no longer just copying. In gaming, Five Minutes Happy Farm went viral before Zyngas FarmVille.
The intense competition in the Chinese internet market has produced other innovations, such as the microblogging platform Weibo, which was developed by Sina and has a wider range of functions than its US equivalent, Twitter (the two are not direct rivals, however, as Twitter is blocked in China). Online shopping platforms, such as Taobao, developed by Alibaba, have also broken new ground, especially in mobile shopping through smartphone apps.
In consumer goods, Chinese companies such as Haier, which makes household appliances, are bec*oming more innovative as they look for an edge outside their home market.
At Baidu, Chinas biggest search engine, with a more than 70 per cent market share, executives also say that recruitment is the biggest challenge. We are in a fast-changing industry that requires innovation and breakthrough products, says Lee Liu, vice-president of human resources.
When Baidu was founded more than a decade ago, critics made much of the fact that its minimalist homepage strongly resembled Googles. But Baidu has taken search in some new directions, for example, with its box computing search approach that includes applications, information and games instead of only web pages. It also has an extensive facial recognition image search, where users can upload pictures that will be compared with faces in Baidus database.
Baidu looks for recruits at Chinese universities and hires more graduates from Tsinghua University and Peking University, the top two schools, than any other big company. Mr Lee says the company looks for innovative recruits through programming competitions and relationships with professors. It is not just seeking students who rank highly academically.
Baidu then encourages innovation with the annual One Million Dollar competition, in which the team that comes up with the most innovative product is awarded $1m in equity in the company. The focus on innovation is such that last year Robin Li, Baidus founder, told his staff to be more like wolves aggressive and creative. Otherwise, he warned, they risked becoming dinosaurs.
China wakes up to innovation - FT.com
The world is coming
In the past two years, China has become a hotspot for research and development facilities. Multinational companies are rapidly boosting their facilities there, drawn by the relatively cheap talent and the lure of being closer to Asian customers.
Max von Zedtwitz, professor of strategy and innovation at Tongji University, Shanghai, says: “The opportunity to be closer to the market and respond to customers better has drawn multinationals to set up research programmes here because China is an increasingly important market.”
Protecting intellectual property remains a concern, he says, but he adds that protections are improving.
In November PepsiCo opened its largest research centre outside the US in Shanghai, where the focus will be on designing foods for Asian tastes. These include Quaker congee or Lay’s hot and sour fish soup flavoured crisps.
GM has also established a research centre that will work on a range of projects, such as electric vehicles and fuel economy. As John Du, director of the centre, pointed out, China produces more science and engineering graduates than the US, Japan and Germany combined.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3d97c42e-7200-11e2-886e-00144feab49a.html#axzz2KcirdfMo
