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Heated Discussion on Pujiang Innovation Forum: the Creation of the Innovation Ecosystem Requiring “More Fertilization and Careful Use of Herbicide”

Source:Original    Author:admin    Time:2019-02-11    View:33

Source: Shanghai Observer  Author: Yu Taoran, Peng Deqing and Xu Ruizhe

 

The words from Li Qiang, Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), have stricken a chord with many audiences

 

To create an innovation ecosystem full of vitality, we shall “give more fertilization and carefully use herbicide”. On the Plenary of 2018 Pujiang Innovation Forum held yesterday morning, the words from Li Qiang, Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) struck a chord with many audiences. In addition, some guests also mentioned the creation of the innovation ecosystem of a city or an area when delivering speeches and accepting exclusive interviews of reporters from Shanghai Observer.

 

How to “give more fertilization and carefully use herbicide” for various kinds of innovative subjects? According to Antoine Petit, President of the French National Center for Scientific Research, the public research institutions should pay attention to the cooperation with start-ups and regard incubating enterprises as one of their own missions. In the suggestions of Wang Yiming, Vice President of Development Research Center of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, China could first confirm the ownership of the scientific and technological achievements of the service inventors, namely, “distributing land first before sharecropping”. In the view of Fang Hanting, Deputy Director of Science and Technology Daily Office, increasing the investment in “self-growing capital” was crucial to the creation of the innovation ecosystem.

 

 “National team” of S&T research also values entrepreneurship

 

The French National Center for Scientific Research is a well-known fundamental research institute in Europe, with approximately 33,000 employees and 1,000 research groups. In 2017, the center ranked second among the world’s scientific research institutions in terms of the number of papers published, next only to Chinese Academy of Sciences. As early as 1978, the French National Center for Scientific Research signed the cooperation agreement with Chinese Academy of Sciences and in recent years, the two research institutions have carried out more than 100 cooperation projects. In terms of talent exchange, the French National Center for Scientific Research always opens its door to Chinese graduate students and welcomes them to be engaged in cutting-edge science and technology research in France.

 

As the head of the “national team” of fundamental science, Petit expressed that the French National Center for Scientific Research always had attached great importance to the cooperation with large, small and medium-sized enterprises and start-ups. In the exclusive interview, he specially emphasized the value of start-ups to the innovation economy of a country and a city. In the “rainforest” of innovation ecosystem, the start-ups, though very weak, were a kind of very dynamic innovation subject. Their growth, birth and death had an irreplaceable position in the entire ecosystem. “President Emmanuel Macron also believes that start-ups are very important to the future development of France.” Therefore, the French National Center for Scientific Research not only focused on cooperation with large enterprises, but also actively cooperated with entrepreneurs, and to incubate new enterprises with its own scientific research teams and achievements.

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 “We hope to better support our researchers and their entrepreneurial behaviors, and give them firm support at each stage of entrepreneurship.” Petit said that the French National Center for Scientific Research had better provided the enterprises with financial support by simplifying its systems and mechanisms and participated in the establishment of seed funds in recent years. “We are very proud to say that the Center can promote the development of about 80 highly innovative startups every year.”

 

When talking about ways to cooperate with enterprises, Petit pointed out that there was no certain exclusive way, but one thing was necessary for promoting the industry-university-research collaborative innovation as well as the transfer and commercialization of scientific and technological achievements, that is the interaction between the S&T and industrial circles. “This is a two-way interaction. Research institutions and companies shall both hold a positive attitude, such as establishing joint laboratories, so as to promote the vitality of the innovation ecosystem.”

 

It is suggested “confirm the ownership first” for the commercialization of scientific and technological achievements

 

Researchers in universities and research institutes are also important subjects of innovation ecosystem. How to “give more fertilization and carefully use herbicide” for them? In the view of Wang Yiming, “There are still some weak points and deep-level problems in China’s science and technology innovation, which require further research and resolution. One of the relatively prominent problems is that the system and mechanism of innovation incentive is not yet perfect." He used the metaphor of “land distribution and sharecropping”, to suggest reforming the existing mechanism, namely, confirming the ownership of scientific and technological achievements of the service inventors first, and then carrying out R&D and commercialization of S&T achievements.

 

In the opinion of Wang Yiming, although China ranks top in the world in terms of the total number of research personnel, the high-end leading talents are still relatively insufficient. This is directly related to the lack of incentives for scientific researchers, which leads to the suppressed initiative of some personnel. “We shall explore endowing the ownership of scientific and technological achievements to scientific research personnel, and property right incentive is the best incentive.” He believed that the reform of the S&T system should consider the reform goal of “effective property right incentive”, and should recognize that the brainpower and knowledge input of researchers and the capital and equipment investment of their units were all inputs. Researchers should share the property rights of the S&T achievements brought by joint investment.

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Previously the Chinese government has proposed to explore to endow scientific researchers the ownership and long-term right to use of the S&T achievements. This kind of proposal could be traced internationally—Bayh Dole Act promulgated by the United States in 1980, and Invention and Development Law revised by the United Kingdom all has such provisions, which have played an important role in accelerating the commercialization of S&T achievements for the two countries. In addition, Sweden has a professor privilege system, which stipulates that the patent rights obtained by financially funded university researches belong to the inventors themselves.

 

Wang Yiming said that this practice in Europe and the United States was worth learning. The most important way to explore to endow the scientific research personnel with the ownership of S&T achievements was to promote the distribution reform of the initial rights and interests of S&T achievements. Before a project was established, the proportion of scientific research teams and units in the disposal of intellectual property rights and the distribution of results should be clearly defined, so that the research project was directly linked with personnel benefits and therefore greatly initiated the initiative of this innovative subject. “The core of this mechanism is to distribute and confirm the ownership first, that is, to confirm the ownership of scientific and technological achievements of the service inventors, and then carry out R&D and commercialization of S&T achievements. This practice can offer greater motivation compared with the practice of confirming ownership later.” From the perspective of economics, confirming the ownership first has three advantages: first, after the property rights are clear, the relevant personnel have greater motivation to work; second, it could reduce the expected uncertainty and is conducive to long-term investment; third, it provides researchers greater motivation to participate in the commercialization of results. 

 

Confirming ownership first is also expected to remove the worry of the loss of state-owned assets in public institutions such as universities. Wang Yiming made an analogy: although it’s stipulated in Law on Promoting the Transformation of Scientific and Technological Achievements, that the proportion of rewards for the commercialization of scientific and technological achievements should be “no less than 50%”, the reward was like sharecropping, and the property right incentive was like distributing land. “Which is better, sharecropping, or distributing land? Our reform has already given the answer.”

 

 “Self-growing capital” will break the economic laws

 

What is the soil on which the “rainforest” survives? How to lay a solid foundation for this soil? At the 2018 Pujiang Innovation Forum·The Science & Technology Finance Forum, Fang Hanting, Deputy Director of Science and Technology Daily Office, introduced the term “self-growing soil”. It’s recorded in the Classic of Mountains and Rivers that: “The floods were governed by King Yu with self-growing soil." It’s explained in Notes to the Classic of Mountains and Rivers that the “self-growing soil is the earth which could grow endlessly and therefore could be used to govern the flood”. Self-growing soil, in legend, means the soil growing by itself without any consumption.

 

By metaphorically using the self-growing soil in King Yu governing the flood, Fang Hanting introduced the meaning of the “self-growing capital”. He believed that if an economy could invest with “self-growing capital” and develop innovation and entrepreneurship activities, it could open an automatic growth mechanism without consumption or with little consumption, and become a special capital with increasing marginal revenue. This type of capital is neither a general asset nor a financial asset, but an intellectual asset. “Only intellectual assets can be expanded at low cost and become assets that can be shared.”

 

The views of Chinese and foreign experts are similar. At Pujiang Innovation Forum, Paul M. Romer, Founder of Endogenous Growth Theory, and 2018 Nobel Prize Winner in Economics was mentioned for many times. In the opinion of Romer, the investment in innovation, knowledge and human capital is increasingly becoming the core driver of economic growth. Under such investment, the law of diminishing marginal revenue that has existed for thousands of years would be broken, and instead, a new law of increasing marginal revenue would be established, which has the benefits of endogenous growth and sustainable development.

 

According to statistics, the R&D investment of China last year accounted for 2.12% of GDP. Although the figure exceeded the average level of the founding countries of the EU, there was still a gap with the innovative countries nowadays. As the Province of Honor of this Pujiang Innovation Forum, Guangdong Province, with the R&D investment accounting for 2.61% of GDP, ranked first in China in terms of input intensity.

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At present, Tsung-Dao Lee Institute is building three experimental platforms in Zhangjiang, for dark matter and neutrino, laboratory astrophysics, and topological superconducting quantum computation. Director Wilczek spoke at the forum yesterday that Tsung-Dao Lee Institute would be committed to becoming a world-famous source of major original innovations, a world-class gathering place of top scientific elites and a practicing place for Chinese young talents facing the future. In his vision, the greatest intellectual capital is the intergenerational talent input from top scientists to young scientists.

 

Editor in Charge: Huang Haihua

Copy Editor: Yu Taoran

Source of Title Picture: Visual China Group

Picture Editor: Yong Kai

Text Pictures Photographed By: Shao Jianping


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