Events
July 1, 2016

Embracing Innovation Across Borders: A China and Australia Perspective

Embracing Innovation Across Borders: A China and Australia Perspective
– An Australian Chamber of Commerce event report from HongFangLaw –

HongFangLaw has attended yesterday the Austcham event focused on innovation development.

please find the official AustCham page here.

HongFangLaw has always supported the development of new applications and the innovation of the science and technology, both from Chinese nationals and foreigners companies that wanted to publish and share their work and insight in China.
HongFangLaw supports these new innovators by filing patents and utilizing all others Intellectual property practices that could help these developments.

On this note, we were invited to a special breakfast event to hear from two innovation experts – Professor Tim Kastelle hailing all the way from Australia and Dr Vicky Ausharing her insight on the grounds here in China. The speakers provided an overview of the Australian and Chinese government recent innovation strategies. In addition, they focused on how they affected company and economic growth.

As the same time, they opened a discussion on the outlook of such strategies on Australia-China business relations.

Tim Kastelle is an Associate Professor in innovation at UQ Business School, and a leading consultant, facilitator, and expert on innovation. His broad work is on the impact of innovation on firm and economic growth, and the application of complex network analysis to innovation at the levels of the firm, region, sector and nation. Tim’s current projects include national innovation systems, how internal structures influence innovation outcomes in project-based firms, and internal networks within an organization and their impact on innovation performance.

If you would like to know more about Tim’s researches you can always check his blog on innovation here: http://timkastelle.org/

Vicky Au is a Director with PwC China based in the Shanghai office, and has specialized as a research and development tax advisor since 2007. She uses her previous experience in the government and higher education sectors to bring together different perspectives on R&D and innovation. Vicky has served as on panels for many Australian government innovation grants and awards, and for commercialization and entrepreneurship business school programs.

During the event, Tim focused on explaining his view on how an innovation should be developed and how we should all follow the lean startup approach.

The most important thing should not be to pursue only the “can I do this”, but also, and more importantly the “should I do this”, and what kind of use my new innovation could have in the world, and who could take advantage of this new innovation in the long run.

Much too often Startups and new ideas fail because the do not have a good application in the real world, and when an innovators has to start and instruct the public on the reason for his innovation, and so implying that the innovation was not requested and not obviously useful, he has failed on his task.

This has already been brought up to the innovation market, both internationally, and in this case for Australia and China, and a new mindset on who and when to found an innovation or idea. This we all hope will bring forth a new business model and a new formalized approach also from the side of the government in dealing with innovations in the future.

Vicky on the other hand, was more focused on the Tax exemption that could be reached using R&D departments inside one own company.

Chinese and Australian governments alike have an interest in developing new technologies and innovations, and for this reason, they are trying to create reasons for companies and individuals to pursue more the development of new ideas and technology by integrating the use of R&D teams.

In addition, there is a huge focus on the protection of these innovations, thanks to the IP Ownership of said innovations, through the IP practice and protection.

For these reasons, we hope that law firms like HongFangLaw will become more and more indispensable to corporations and governments as a protection of their own intellectual property ownership became more and more fundamental.

This is all truer if we see what has been said during the 13th Five-Year Plan with president Xi Jinping reiterating his vision for an innovative China.

The 13th FYP Proposal contains five main principles underpinning the policies for China’s future development. None of these ideas is new, but has been put into one place for the first time. They are to work in tandem to achieve the overall goal of creating “a moderately prosperous society.”

The first principle is innovation, primarily as a driver of economic development. This is in order to shift China’s economic structure into a higher-quality growth pattern. This means finding new drivers of growth by promoting innovation and entrepreneurship, while simultaneously creating an environment conducive to producing Chinese national champions. The quest for innovation will be across the board from enterprises to government regulations.

This will mean new regulations of control of such innovations, and the development of a new set of rules for the IP practice and protection, and HongFangLaw will keep good track of this new developments to protect our clients on the best of our possibilities.

By Federico Bartolini

If you would like some more personalized review of the event?from us, please kindly let us know by writing to: public.relation@hongfanglaw.com. Thank you.