1 February 2012

New horizons: how Hong Kong is stimulating innovation

What is the Science and Technology Parks Corporation?

We were established in 2001, so last year was a great opportunity to review our progress over the last 10 years. The Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (STPC) is a statutory body. The idea behind setting up the corporation was to create a new economic pillar in Hong Kong which didn’t rely entirely on finance and trade. We were set up to develop Hong Kong into a technology and innovation hub in Asia—that’s our mission.

We were given a science park to manage. In the last 10 years we have developed phases one and two. We have about 2 million square feet of office space right here at the science park.

We’re about to start constructing phase three (December 2011), which will give us another 1 million square feet of office and laboratory space. This is dedicated for research and development. We have recruited 350 companies to the park as of today, and have approximately 8500 people working at the park.

What is the profile of the companies at the park?

We have about 100 companies in start-up mode, 100 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the rest are larger-sized companies, both local and international. A requirement for coming to the park is that at least 50 percent of the staff here must be engaged in R&D. Our biggest tenant is Philips, with 1000 employees based in the park, including four or five business groups. Its digital living business group is headquartered here.

What is the STPC’s role in relation to these companies?

The corporation’s role is to build a top class facility, and to provide soft infrastructure to develop Hong Kong into a digital innovation hub.

We have built common-use laboratories for tenants to use, which are equipped, managed and staff ed by our employees. This benefi ts smaller companies that do not have to invest large amounts of money in the equipment. They only pay for use.

“IN TERMS OF PATENTS, WE HAVE SEEN MORE IN GREEN TECH, BIOTECH AND NANO-TECHNOLOGY. I THINK THAT’S BECAUSE ON IT SOFTWARE YOU MAY HAVE COPYRIGHT, BUT NOT SO MANY PATENTS.”

We charge them so we can break even on the operation side, and we don’t count depreciation. This is to reduce the hurdle for people to get started on the development of their products, and to help them navigate the ‘valley of death’ that new start-ups face. We also run a lot of information exchanges. People come to the park to talk about what they’re working on. For example, Google is coming to talk about Android 4.0, which is great for platform developers here. We also invite a lot of world leaders and business leaders to come and give their views.

Companies such as Siemens and Schneider Electric have been and shared their views of the future. We run seminars on IP, including by US visitors who have come to give talks on the new US IP laws. We also run company-matching schemes, with a focus on matching companies with each other in-house.

What obligation do companies at the park have to you?

They are all independent companies, and we do not own a share, even for incubations—they come in and we waive the rent for the first year and then charge half rent for the following years. In certain areas we even give matching funding. For example, if they go and fi le for patents, we can pay 50 percent of the filing fees worldwide.

Hong Kong has a re-registration type of system, so a lot of them will file patents in the UK or China and then come back and re-register. We have one start-up company that focuses on nanoheat technology; it filed 35 patents. That’s a lot of patents, it spent about HK$6 million ($774,000) on patent fees, and we matched 50 percent of that.

What is the balance of industries represented at the park?

We have five technology areas to focus on: electronics, including semi-conductors; IT and communications; nano-technology; biotech and green technology. Traditionally, we have more electronic and ICT companies, which represent about 60 percent of our population. However, in terms of patents, we have seen more in green tech, biotech and nano-technology.

I think that’s because on IT software you may have copyright, but not so many patents. We don’t see a lot of patents in the ICT areas, except on semi-conductors where there will be core patents. We have 70 percent Hong Kong companies and about 30 percent from overseas.

What are the challenges to attracting companies here, given the worries that people have about IP in China?

We take full advantage of the IP situation in China. I think a lot of people are still very concerned about the protection of IP here. It’s not really about the law itself, but the enforcement of law ... and the culture of people in China.

People in China tend to think that whatever they create belongs to them personally, rather than belonging to the company they are employed by, which is entirely different from a western world view, and from what you will find in Hong Kong. This is the norm here and people respect that. It is very hard to enforce culture in law.

What links do you have with academia and universities in Hong Kong?

We have very strong links. We work closely with the six Hong Kong universities that have technical degrees. We work with them in four or five areas. One is supply of resources for the companies—we help with company recruitments. Every year we have a big recruitment day prior to graduation for the companies. The next area is entrepreneurship. We work with them, we promote entrepreneurship and promote our incubation programme.

We let them know that if they want to start a company, we can help them with that. The third area is technology licensing. We have set up a portal, a search engine at our science and tech parks website, that links to all six universities. You type keywords, and all the university patents will come up. Then you can drill down into their own websites if something interesting comes up, and you can contact their tech transfer office.

Do you provide any other support in terms of IP?

At STPC we go out and tender for legal firms. They then come in and offer a rate, normally at a discount, for tenants in the park. We have a panel to select the best 15 or 16 of them, based on offers, price and mix of expertise of this group.

We will post this on our Intranet, to give our companies a shortlist of people to work with who have already been screened by our panel. We also facilitate so-called ‘free chat’, though the law firms would not like to use that phrase. So the companies can talk to a firm for free, and if they want further services then they can sign up.

Already registered?

Login to your account

To request a FREE 2-week trial subscription, please signup.
NOTE - this can take up to 48hrs to be approved.

Two Weeks Free Trial

For multi-user price options, or to check if your company has an existing subscription that we can add you to for FREE, please email Adrian Tapping at atapping@newtonmedia.co.uk