Kai-Fu Lee: China and Beijing are the best places for scientists to start their own businesses

At the HICOOL2021 Global Entrepreneur Summit held on September 11, Kai-Fu Lee, chairman and CEO of Innovation Factory, said in his keynote speech on "It's Time for Hard Technology Entrepreneurship" that driven by the increasingly vigorous disruptive innovation brought about by the intersection of science and technology, policy catalysis, and an innovation environment that increases innovation investment, hard technology entrepreneurship has entered the best era.

Judging from the wave of the historical technological era, major technological breakthroughs can detonate new industries and spawn a large number of leading enterprises. Kai-Fu Lee believes that at present, the four technical directions of AI automation, advanced computing, new energy, and life sciences are undergoing tremendous changes, and a number of companies and new industries that have changed the world will be produced. Taking artificial intelligence as an example, after the breakthrough of deep learning, new AI algorithms continue to emerge. After computer vision surpassed humans, in terms of natural language, AI gradually surpassed humans.

In this context, scientists who master hard science and technology usher in spring. But at the same time, scientists are facing the problem of "the long board is particularly long, the short board is relatively short", such as specific implementation, making money, products, user needs, etc., scientists may not necessarily understand. At this time, there is a need for incubators, investment companies and other talents to make up for these shortcomings, these people need to understand both technology and industry. They may need to help scientists build teams together, find entrepreneurial partners, find business applications, and help scientists and entrepreneurs walk through the "valley of death".

For example, Kai-Fu Lee said that the innovation workshop team has 15 PhDs, which allows them to communicate with them in the same "language" as scientists, helping them through the journey of entrepreneurship. Through research, excavation, crossover, landing and other steps, hand in hand and scientists to create a "specialized and new" company.

"I deeply believe that the era of science and technology entrepreneurship is in this era, and China and Beijing are the best places for these scientists to start a business." Kai-Fu Lee said.