On October 29th, Kai-Fu Lee, CEO of Innovation Works, said that the entrepreneurial innovation in Taiwan is “as sick as” himself on the 11th Annual Global Views Business Forum in Taiwan. This is Mr. Lee’s debut appearance since his diagnosis of cancer, and his last public speech before taking chemotherapy.Lee said that the entrepreneurial innovation in Taiwan was successful as one of the Four Asian Tigers. IT enterprises, for instance, led the hardware revolution, yet failed to catch up with the software, internet and mobile revolutions afterwards. When hardware companies, like HP and Dell, flourished in the United States, Taiwan’s hardware companies, Foxconn and TSMC, were also heat topics. After US entered Google-Facebook era, Taiwan, however, remained the same. In ICT, Taiwan falls behind Mainland China and even the other “three tigers”.According to Taiwan’s Commercial Times, in his speech, Lee compared the innovation culture in Taiwan with that in Mainland China. He took the market of Mainland China as a pretty large one, and the entrepreneurs as wolves hungry for success. Mainland’s environment benefits iterative entrepreneurship, where according to Lee “a small product is produced and then upgraded iteratively”. Iterative entrepreneurship would be suitable for diligent and wolf-like entrepreneurs to fight, with their crews, in a large market, Lee added.The products and vision of Taiwan entrepreneurs, though, are limited by the “small” Taiwan market. He said there were successful start-up companies in the internet industry, like Yam and PChome, but they still remained within the island. “A small market won’t bring forth great companies”, Lee added. Unfortunately, the entrepreneurial innovation falls into a vicious circle - start-ups target at Taiwan market where investments and innovations are poor, and don’t want to invest without considerable profits.?Therefore, he suggested Taiwan entrepreneurs target at the international market, including Southeast Asia and Mainland China. Taiwan still has many opportunities, especially in “software-hardware-cloud” related techniques, Lee said. Recently, in Silicon Valley, the most popular technique is to build small gadgets that grant internet access to watches, glasses and cars. Perhaps, everything at your home can get online in the future. Is this just the niche for ICT of Taiwan?At the end of his speech, Lee called for an establishment of new environment for innovation in Taiwan and offered seven suggestions: a) introducing experienced high-end entrepreneurs with global views; b) rewarding excellent novice entrepreneurs, and stop forcing entrepreneurs to contribute full capital for their business; c) encouraging entrepreneurs to target at larger markets at the very beginning; d) amending unreasonable registration and investment regulations; e) introducing and encouraging experienced entrepreneurs, and encouraging investment under VIE framework; f) the government should centralise resources and let go of decision-making authority to experts; g) universities should provide complementary support for professors to become academic entrepreneurs.
