FG, SPURRING STARTUPS AND LESSONS FROM CHINA

In the 70s, China needed a change. It could not come fast enough. Their challenge? Transform the world’s largest country into a real-time, go-fast economy-with major internal structural changes. From the beginning, she worked with the West and others as a critical partner in providing, adopting, adapting and outright copying of innovations and inventions. All were instrumental to the vision: a great China.
The result? China is the world’s second largest economy after the United States. It has been the world’s fastest-growing major economies, with consistent growth rates of 5% – 15% over the past 30 years. China is also the largest exporter and second largest importer of goods in the world. Also China shows a global lead in process innovation: the relentless improvement of factories and distribution systems and product innovation: the adaptation of existing goods to their unique requirements.
Strikingly as a result also, The Economist pointed out that “China has invested heavily in homegrown innovation. The government has not only persuaded Microsoft and Google to establish research centres in China. It has also set up science parks across the country, in the hope of creating a Chinese Silicon Valley. Beijing’s Zhongguancun Science Park alone is home to thousands of high-tech enterprises. Chinese universities are joining the charge. Peking University, for example, has established “innovation and entrepreneurship” programmes.”
Overseas, Western governments are aching hard to launch their states as ‘StartUp Nations’. Barack Obama had helped launch Start-Up America while Britain followed suit. This is initiatives are an alliance of the country’s most innovative entrepreneurs, corporations, foundations, and other private sector leaders working to dramatically increase the prevalence and success of high-growth enterprises in the US and Britain.
It is pertinent to note here that Start-Ups have very different ecosystems, unique educational tools, economic incentives (tax breaks, paperwork/regulation reduction, and incentives), incubators and risk capital. What we have noticed is that government agencies and politicians simply give out money to pseudo-entrepreneurs. As the various FG, State governments and worried politicians dole out money, they should know that this is not a ‘job program or its likes’. And if they continue in this practice, it is doomed to fail.
Most importantly, an achievable startup ecosystem is purely capitalist exercise. It excludes any act of in “fairness” or “patronage.” As it is a meritocracy, it factors in equal measure of risk, greed, vision and obscene financial returns. For state building incubator centers in the country, appreciating this fact is just the way forward.
In all, industry innovation cluster simply requires an ecosystem of private not government-run incubators and venture capital firms, collaborating universities, and a tight startup selection process. Let the reforms continue, as to the future-We set on it!