News & Analysis
Will China bury its bad IP past?
Junko Yoshida
9/28/2012 6:51 PM EDT
Growing Chinese startups
Chinese startups often follow a different trajectory from their Western counterparts. Between 1980 and 2000, the Chinese startup was a university spinoff. Over the last decade, more universities have spun off professors to head startups, Chen explained.
The problem with this “professor spin-off” approach is that professors who come up with innovations must shift gears from R&D to CTO, then manufacturing boss and eventually CEO. Chinese startups often end up floundering because most professors are not trained to do that. “Not everyone can be a jack of all trades,” Chen noted.
“I have no intention to hire tenured professors to run projects or startups,” he said. “We need entrepreneurs coming from outside who are willing to take risks to lead projects and compete [for] national grants.”
Pay for professor/entrepreneurs will be based on their projects, not out of the university’s payroll. Chen acknowledged that this Open Innovation Platform creates an “unfair competitive advantage for PKU.”
The Platform is set up to offer PKU’s resources in technology, faculty knowledge and post doc students to those who seek help in developing an incubation process, he explained.
The university’s response to Chen’s tech transfer proposal has so far been enthusiastic. Its embrace of the project derives in part from Chen’s promise to finance startups on a “project by project” basis. That approach could eliminate the importance of old connections and favoritism, requiring a new merit-based model to successfully connect investment with deserving projects that protect IP rights.
“China has money,” Chen reiterated, but “China needs rules of engagement and China needs to make the process transparent” in order to protect IP rights.
Related stories:
China IP debate: 'Everyone's afraid their tech will be stolen. . .'
Yoshida in China: Beijing’s science park 2.0
Yoshida in China: How Nokia failed, MediaTek won
Yoshida in China: Whither the neglected 6 billion?
Chinese startups often follow a different trajectory from their Western counterparts. Between 1980 and 2000, the Chinese startup was a university spinoff. Over the last decade, more universities have spun off professors to head startups, Chen explained.
The problem with this “professor spin-off” approach is that professors who come up with innovations must shift gears from R&D to CTO, then manufacturing boss and eventually CEO. Chinese startups often end up floundering because most professors are not trained to do that. “Not everyone can be a jack of all trades,” Chen noted.
“I have no intention to hire tenured professors to run projects or startups,” he said. “We need entrepreneurs coming from outside who are willing to take risks to lead projects and compete [for] national grants.”
Pay for professor/entrepreneurs will be based on their projects, not out of the university’s payroll. Chen acknowledged that this Open Innovation Platform creates an “unfair competitive advantage for PKU.”
The Platform is set up to offer PKU’s resources in technology, faculty knowledge and post doc students to those who seek help in developing an incubation process, he explained.
The university’s response to Chen’s tech transfer proposal has so far been enthusiastic. Its embrace of the project derives in part from Chen’s promise to finance startups on a “project by project” basis. That approach could eliminate the importance of old connections and favoritism, requiring a new merit-based model to successfully connect investment with deserving projects that protect IP rights.
“China has money,” Chen reiterated, but “China needs rules of engagement and China needs to make the process transparent” in order to protect IP rights.
Related stories:
China IP debate: 'Everyone's afraid their tech will be stolen. . .'
Yoshida in China: Beijing’s science park 2.0
Yoshida in China: How Nokia failed, MediaTek won
Yoshida in China: Whither the neglected 6 billion?
|
|
|
|
|
Navigate to related information
goafrit
9/28/2012 5:24 PM EDT
Good move. IP = wealth and it is time everyone understands that.
Sign in to Reply
Bert22306
9/29/2012 5:52 PM EDT
Very interesting. With all the Chinese nationals attending and teaching in universities in the West, including in the most prestigious and competitive ones, one almost wonders how come there aren't more outspoken ones like Prof. Chen.
It will be fascinating to see how this evolves. I have to believe that IP issues certainly, but a whole host of other apparent disconnects between our ways of thinking, can't help but come closer together in time. Especially since universtities in the US and other western countries continue to seek, very actively, Chinese and other foreign students and faculty.
Do a web search on the demographic makeup of entering Freshmen in Ivy League and any other prestigious universities, and you can't help but see this trend. I can't help but believe this will bear fruit eventually.
Sign in to Reply
EREBUS
9/30/2012 5:21 PM EDT
Eventually the chinese will discover that when you do not respect other peoples IP, then they will not respect yours. When China reaches a point where they can truely develop new IP, they will face the dilema. To produce products with the IP will jeopardize their control. Yet, failing to profit from their IP will remove the profit and technical advantage they may have created. In short, they will be damned if they do and damned if they don't.
Welcome to the new open society.
Sign in to Reply
resistion
9/30/2012 8:26 PM EDT
Well it's a matter of realizing you can't have your cake and eat it too.
Sign in to Reply
Daniel Payne
10/1/2012 11:10 AM EDT
What great irony, this professor coins a phrase "Open Innovation Platform" that is already a registered Trademark of TSMC. Next time do a little search on Google before re-using a well-known term in the semiconductor industry. http://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/services/oip.htm
Sign in to Reply
junko.yoshida
10/1/2012 11:21 AM EDT
Ouch. Not good.
Sign in to Reply
chipmonk
10/1/2012 11:15 AM EDT
For the last 20 years the West has been committing slow suicide ( much like being hooked on dope ) by dealing with China, training its Scientists / Engineers and transferring technology for free. Like some human "Ibola virus" China is devouring the West alive. The only people still advocating free trade with China or defending its " grand theft - IP " are the Wall St. 1 % ers who have profited by deliberately giving away US competitiveness to China and the pols, media hacks and shoddy academics they have rented to defend their looting of America among the masses who are still brain washed with 'free' trade.
Sign in to Reply
microe
10/2/2012 5:06 PM EDT
Look at how the prices will skyrocket without made in China. Look at how much more pollution you will suffer without made in China. Chinese are suffering the pollution, making money just enough to make a living. YOU, while enjoying the inexpensive products they produced (but cannot afford to use), accuse them of virus. what a person you are??!!
When you can use free trade to explore others, promote it, even through wars; when other people get out of poverty through free trade, you want to ban it. this is not selfish but evil
Sign in to Reply
Kapylan_Pallo
10/19/2012 3:16 PM EDT
Free trade should require a mutual understanding of what one person owns and is receiving value for.
The situation here is a lack of respect for this process. If China would respect the IP rights of partners there could be free trade. When someone outright steals IP as Chinese companies have done many times over at all levels (Huawei-Cisco) then there can be no "fair trade". It is then time to write a set of rules and stick to them. Our US Government is too deeply in debt and does not have the courage to take a stand, but private enterprise should lead the way. In fact market economics will dictate that either China changes, or corporate trade policy changes.
If you are complaining about the standard of living in China, you should direct complaints to Chinese government bureaucrats who live quite well relatively among the "huddled masses" there.
Sign in to Reply
junko.yoshida
10/1/2012 11:25 AM EDT
One thing I would like to ask our readers is the following:
If funding is available in China -- either on federal, provincial or municipal levels, wouldn't you like to pitch your project to China, get the capital and see if your technology/product may take off in China?
If yes, then who do you talk to in China? How do you go about it?
Sign in to Reply
ruserious
10/1/2012 12:06 PM EDT
Junko, I have personal experience in this area. The process I've seen used is to partner with a Chinese businessman/engineer here in the U.S. who has "connections" back in China.
Sign in to Reply
junko.yoshida
10/1/2012 12:53 PM EDT
Yes, I recognize that's how things are usually done. As long as you have a Chinese businessman that you trust, and that person has a "good connection" back home, that's probably the way to go.
Did you get the funding you were looking for?
Can that model scale?
Sign in to Reply
ruserious
10/1/2012 7:15 PM EDT
We did get the funding, but in the end the folks we worked with were not entirely trustworthy.
That "connections" model can scale, with certain local governments in China promising lots of free perks for setting up shop in their towns.
Sign in to Reply
junko.yoshida
10/2/2012 3:18 PM EDT
If you want to know more about Dongmin Chen, don't forget to read the following blog, in which I identify Prof. Chen as one of China's daredevils.
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4397467/Yoshida-in-China--Cultural-rev-survivors-leap-forward
Sign in to Reply