If you can get 300+ Hongkongers to take an entire day off work to attend a sell-out conference on innovation then I would hardly say entrepreneurship in this town is dead. On the contrary, it’s alive, kickin’, and poised for explosive growth.
The conference, dubbed Tipping Point Hong Kong and moderated by Prof. Gregg Li, is the product of Business and Professionals Federation of Hong Kong (BPF), where Li serves as Vice Chairman. The events’ aims are to promote innovation in Hong Kong, bridge gaps between industry and government, and encourage students to participate in the process of innovation. A dominating theme I’ve been hearing in the business community, and today was no exception, is that Hong Kong needs to diversify away from banking and real estate and invest more in innovation and entrepreneurship. This should be encouraging for those of us supporting or running startups.
The event featured keynote speeches from noted experts on innovation in Asia including Prof. Gordon Redding, Senior Fellow, INSEAD, Dr. Po Chi Wu, Adjunct Professor, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Prof. Arthur Ellis, Provost, City University of Hong Kong, and Mr. Nicholas Yang, Executive Vice President, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. 14 panel sessions were held on various topics ranging from fostering innovation in Hong Kong’s education system in education to the status of the Hong Kong tech startup scene. During lunch students had the opportunity to present their ideas in a customer validation exercise, as well as to angel investors.
Of particular interest to me was the opening keynote from Prof. Redding, wherein he explained why Hong Kong has the potential to be China’s gateway to the modern world of free markets and capitalism. I liked his presentation so much I wrote an entire article on it here.
Unfortunately there were so many opportunities I couldn’t attend all of them. I heard good things about Prof. Kevin Au’s presentation on how to make social innovation a new dimension of competitiveness for Hong Kong, and Marcel Ekkel’s panel on the status of the Hong Kong Tech Startup scene.
What please me most was to see how many people were in attendance which, as I estimated above, topped 300. I can only assume this group is a small fraction of those who would have liked to come, or who otherwise support entrepreneurship in Hong Kong. With that kind of support Hong Kong is indeed well prepared for future startup opportunities.
