Cultivating a risk culture biggest barrier to Hong Kong's tech dreams
The city's business ethos has created some of the world's richest people, but it faces a steep learning curve in fostering innovation and start-ups
If you don't take risks, you will always work for someone who does. It is the best description of Hong Kong's business culture and how it has cultivated some of the world's richest people. But it faces a steep learning curve fostering innovation and entrepreneurship.
It's no coincidence that "entrepreneurialism" has been declared a critical strategic industry by leaders in the mainland Chinese and Hong Kong governments. Mainland China needs to inject technology and innovation into its economy to create jobs and catch up with the US. Between 10 million and 12 million young people enter the job market every year in the country. Unless they want to cling to the lower rungs of their career ladder by working at a fast-food outlet, they will need entry-level jobs that suit their education, such as white-collar jobs in marketing, technology or finance.
For similar reasons, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying is also keen to launch Hong Kong's own technology bureau. He even circumvented his opponents in the Legislative Council by appointing the bureau's future head as a consultant. And Shenzhen, which claims to be mainland China's true Silicon Valley because of all its experience in making electronic products, is trying to link up with Hong Kong's financial capabilities.
Countries have tried and failed to copy America's Silicon Valley for decades through every generation of technological development. Rather than try to emulate, policymakers need to understand and succeed within their limitations. Unlike infrastructure, governments can't simply decree that creative industries should emerge.
China's biggest problem isn't finding smart people within China, but to draw people from around the world
Incubators have sprouted in Hong Kong like wine shops. Walk around Sheung Wan and Western districts and one can see ads for shared offices described as "spaces ideal for entrepreneurs and incubators".
At least these landlords have not misinterpreted their minimal role. Low rent and cool-looking offices equipped with the latest espresso machines are certainly pleasant but an unnecessary part of start-up culture. More important than low rent is a core brain trust - people who can share hard-won experience with both successful and, most of all, failed start-ups. Unfortunately, such talent does not always take a traditional or academic form.
Realistically, few people are suited to start and run their own businesses and even fewer can succeed in technology. Everybody has ideas. Nobody wants to put in the work. Don't tell me what you are going to do. Show me what you have done.
Silicon Valley success is very much part of the unique state of mind called California, where free-thinking engineers are supported and funded by like-minded people. It represents a business culture that is more tolerant of low-level failure than Asian or European cultures. No one likes to lose fifty or a hundred thousand dollars on funding an idea, but the ability to effectively deal with this kind of risk is a problem for many Hong Kong investors.
Li Ka-shing's Horizon Ventures is an example of the kind of misguided venture capital that Hong Kong spins out. It claims to be behind Facebook and Skype among other famous technology companies, although you would be hard pressed to find anyone at those firms who would say they played a role any more significant than buying into a later-stage financing round. It represents the kind of speculation and opportunism that makes foreigners mock Hong Kong's definition of technology investing.
In a interview, one of Horizon's founders, Solina Chan Hoi-shuen, said: "[Li Ka-shing] loves to meet and geek with the founders and [chief executives] of companies within our 'disruptive' portfolio to understand their concepts and missions." Really? Can anyone imagine Hong Kong's biggest property developer donning a "hoodie" and hanging out with Mark Zuckerberg? With its resources, Horizon should be supporting Hong Kong start-ups.
China's biggest problem isn't finding smart people within China, but to draw people from around the world. China draws on a talent pool of 1.3 billion people, but the US attracts people from all over the world and blends them in a wildly diverse and competitive culture that percolates creativity in a way that Chinese nationalism can probably never accomplish.
Despite being in economic decline since the 1970s, America is a country that leads in technology because it successfully reckons many inherent contradictions in a way that mainland Chinese cannot grasp coming from their authoritarian or paternalistic corporate and education environments.
