Starting from December 15, Songshan Lake will embrace the strongest Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competition with six finals on display successively. At the end of this month, the grand final will be hosted in Songshan Lake.
Since being launch in October, the 9th China Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competition Huawei Special Field and 2020 Songshan Lake Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competition (hereinafter referred to as “Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competition”) has been advanced steadily with unremitting popularity.
The launch ceremony
What are the highlights in this year’s Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competition? How are the settlement and development of the winner projects since the first competition held in 2015? What are the advantages of Songshan Lake as the magnet of Innovation & Entrepreneurship?
Factors of innovation and entrepreneurship converge with nearly 940 projects signing up for competition
Five industry competitions explore potential for innovation and entrepreneurship. Women session is added to collect the “She Power”; about 1,000 projects signed up for competition with more than 2,500 items related to intellectual property right being reported; the number of doctors exceeded 1/4 and participants with background of education overseas accounted for about 1/5… Though the overseas session of this year’s Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competition is cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there is still unremitting popularity for signing up for the competition.
Since the first competition held in 2015, Songshan Lake Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competition has been closely followed and has emerged as one of the prominent forces of Songshan Lake’s innovation and entrepreneurship power. Under the theme of “Innovative Songshan Lake, Future Science City”, this year’s Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competition seeks further breakthrough and deeper participation in the building of an international innovation and entrepreneurship community dependent on the pilot policies for the community, driving up passion among applicants.
Group photo of training for women session
According to statistics, there are about 940 projects signing for the 2020 Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competition, including 115 projects of fitness and health (Huawei Special Field), 196 projects of new materials and semiconductor industry, 132 projects of robots industry, 188 projects of future telecommunication industry, 126 projects of advanced technology industry and 183 projects of women session.
Innovation is the primary driving force and talents are the primary resources. The convening of the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competition will draw more innovation resources to Songshan Lake. In terms of the education background of the candidates, 25.18% of the competitors hold a PhD degree, 17.23% with experience of studying abroad. In terms of the intellectual property right, the projects enjoy high level of technology with 2,521 items of intellectual property right being reported, including 1,808 patents and 698 copyrights for software.
Environment for innovation and entrepreneurship is very attractive with the employment rate of enterprises reaching 80%
“A year ago, we were totally inexperienced and got nothing except technology, but now we had completed two rounds of financing.” Mo Jingjie, founder of Dongguan Chuangleng Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Chuangleng Technology”), was full of myriad of feelings when talking about the changes the company has undergone over the past year.
In the 2019 Songshan Lake Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competition, the team led by Mo Jingjie won the special prize with its “ways of heat dissipation based on new materials”. Since its settlement on Songshan Lake, the company has enjoyed all-round “babysitting” services from policies to fund, site to life, helping the company achieve leapfrogging development.
Except Chuangleng Technology, Narwal Intelligence, the first-prize winner, also showed impressive development momentum. Following completion of series B financing in April, the company completed series C financing shortly within two months. In this year’s Tmall 618 “cleaning carnival”, the company sold 13,000 sweepers within 30 seconds; on the “Double 11” shopping festival, the company ranked first in the industry in terms of sales on the Tmall flagship store starting from the 30th second when the balance is open to be paid.
According to the people in charge of the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competition, from 2015 to 2019, the projects settled from the four competitions have enjoyed sound development momentum. As of now, the settled enterprises have achieved a total investment of over 500 million yuan with the average employment rate reaching 80.36%. Among the enterprises having cancelled the registration, most of them relocated due to business need.
The extraordinary geographical location and business environment of Dongguan and Songshan Lake also constitute one highlight of the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competition. According to statistics, over half of the projects signing for competition are from other provinces and projects outside of Dongguan account for more than 80%.
City of University Innovation
At the beginning of November this year, Dongguan reviewed and approved the “Interim Measures for Supporting and Rewarding Dongguan’s Key Business Invitation Parks (Low-Cost Space)”. It is clearly pointed out that by the end of 2022, low-cost space with an area of no less than 50,000 square meters should be planned and coordinated in the Songshan Lake Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone. The City of University Innovation, as one of the pilots of Dongguan’s first batch of key business invitation parks (low-cost space), managed to arrange a space with an area of 15,000 square meters, mainly targeted at high-growth projects and high-tech enterprises and extending lease place and rent reduction.
In terms of industry development, Songshan Lake Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone has been actively developing information technology industry, biotechnology industry, intelligent equipment industry, new materials industry and production services industry in recent years. As a result, it has attracted leading enterprises in the industry such as Huawei, Shengyi Technology, Inovance Technology and Fangda New Materials, laying a solid foundation for the development of enterprises dealing with innovation and entrepreneurship.
Final is about to take place with upgrading of the competition
Since the first competition in 2015, the operation of Songshan Lake Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competition sees constant increase of maturity, level and size. Currently, it has emerged as a comprehensive service platform that combines multiple functions of innovation and entrepreneurship such as technology exchanges, results display, fund alignment, industry services and projects settlement.
Dongguan Institute of Opto-Electronics, Peking University
To further elevate the competition, greater support was given to enterprises dealing with innovation and entrepreneurship in this year’s Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competition from aspects such as capital reward, direct investment of fund, space reward and resources alignment. The first, second and third prize projects are chosen from each division competition, running the chance of winning prize money ranging from 300,000 to 500,000 yuan; project winning special prize can achieve reward of one million yuan if settled within the stipulated period of time.
Moreover, starting from this year, Songshan Lake plans to arrange 15 million yuan annually to specially used for investment in projects winning the special prize (investment for each project ranging from two to five million yuan in principle) to support settlement and development of the innovation and entrepreneurship projects.
To lower the cost for starting business for startups, the organizer has organized 10 technology bearers in the park as the supporting units, providing rent-free office space and relevant services for the winners to eliminate concerns of the settled enterprises and teams.
In addition, the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competition also set up systematic alignment policies based on features of different industry competitions. Competitors make it to the semifinal or project winners will have access to major platforms and enterprises such as Huawei, Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory, the Institute of Opto-Electronics of Peking University, Xbot Park, Dongguan Songshan Lake New Generation of Communications Industry Research Institute and China State Shipbuilding Corporation. With these accesses, they can realize relevant alignment in order support, strategic investment and industry resources.
Starting from December 15, finals of different industry competitions of Songshan Lake Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competition will be convened in succession. Songshan Lake is going to embrace the strongest innovation and entrepreneurship competition. In the future, more enterprises dealing with innovation and entrepreneurship will settle in Songshan Lake, injecting fresh impetus into its development and advancing construction of the Songshan Lake Science City.