Technology empowers innovation ecosystem and enables digital transformation of companies

The opening ceremony of the EY wavespace™ flagship center in Beijing and a corporate digital transformation summit is held today at the Excel Center in Beijing. The flagship center strives at empowering innovation and transformation, business growth and driving business applications of forefront technologies in companies; focuses on building eco-alliances; incorporates the latest industrial ideas; fosters implementation of projects through interactive innovation; and serves offline with online. wavespace™ is the EY global innovation network and digital factory. There are wavespace™ centers in more than 40 of the most dynamic and innovative urban areas around the world.

In recent years, China is one of the countries in the world with the most rapid development in digital economy and technological innovation. According to the data of the China Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the proportion of the digital economy in China’s GDP keeps increasing. The numbers of unicorn companies, invention patents, new 5G base stations, coverage of optic-fiber networks and the flow of data with mobile network access are at a leading position in the world. In addition, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC) issued in February this year the "Notice on Accelerating the Digital Transformation of State-owned Enterprises" to fully drive acceleration of digitalization in central and state-owned enterprises so that they will become the digital transformation benchmark for vertical industries. Chinese enterprises are actively capitalizing on and leading the trend of information technology change of the new generation, and opening up the road to digital transformation to help the country’s economy to be competitive globally in the new wave of global technological revolution and industrial change.

Jack Chan, EY China Chairman and EY Greater China Regional Managing Partner, said, “Against the backdrop of establishing ‘dual circulation’ development pattern in which domestic economic cycle plays a leading role while international economic cycle remains its extension and supplement, the 14th Five-Year Plan emphasizes to achieve the long-term goal of ‘achieving major breakthroughs in key technologies and entering the forefront of innovative countries’ by 2035. Technological innovation is one of the most important power forces to underpin China’s high-quality economic development, and digital economy in particular will become a crucial engine for future growth. EY has been working with clients to improve digital and intelligent capabilities and investing in technologies, including big data, blockchain, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and robot. In doing so, we have accumulated a wealth of experience and successful cases in helping businesses in innovation transformation and accelerating the application and transformation of innovation outcomes.”

The fifth plenary session of the 19th CPC Central Committee laid out the ambitious blueprint for innovation-driven development in the new development stage, and clearly supported the development of an international technological and innovative center in Beijing and other regions: from “national technological and innovative center” to “international technological and innovative center”. It provides a new historical mission to Beijing in the development of technological power. Beijing is actively driving digital industrialization and industrial digitalization transformation, building a global benchmark city in the digital economy and actively integrating in the new global technological innovation network to achieve the target of having a “world leading international technology and innovation center in terms of innovation, competitiveness and influence” by 2035.

Hoffman Cheong, EY China North Managing Partner, said, “This positioning of the capital leads to a national and international positioning of a technological and innovation center in Beijing. On one hand, Beijing is a place that gathers national technology and innovation resources. It is also a place with the concentration of the national technology and research institutions, educational institutions and innovative enterprises. It therefore has clear advantage over other provinces and cities in technology and innovation resources. On the other hand, Beijing is leading in national technology and innovation. It was ranked number one for the third consecutive year as a global technology and research city and is becoming one of the global science centers in the world. Its global ranking in business environment also keeps improving steadily with a dynamic innovative ecosystem. EY keeps up the spirit of ‘leveraging technology to help transformation’ and set up a wavespace™ flagship center in Beijing to optimize the allocation of technology resources in Beijing based on major demand so as to provide companies with professional services to help them continue to advance digitalization transformation in their life cycles.”

Ben Kwan, EY Greater China Innovation Leader, said, “The core competitiveness of EY wavespace™ lies at the interconnected innovation network that covers more than 40 most dynamic and innovative urban areas around the world. EY launched 47 wavespace™ centers around the world, 26 of them are flagship centers. There are three flagship centers in total in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. The one in Beijing is our latest which also makes it the 47th wavespace™ center. Based on the extensive global innovative network, every innovation center speeds up and empowers over 100 innovation projects every year, and almost 5,000 projects were driven yearly globally. In compliance with the applicable laws and regulations of the country or region, all the innovative centers are closely connected and share resources. They integrate cross-industries, regions and professional experiences and therefore could better provide various companies and institutions with innovative advice and resolutions that meet their needs.”

From big data and intellectual intelligence to blockchain, every EY wavespace™ center has its own technology focus. Paul Cheung, EY¹ Greater China TMT Consulting Leader, said, “The Beijing wavespace™ flagship center focuses on the industrial trend and business applications of 5G technology, which means how 5G may become a new normal in our life and the business environment, how to empower digitalization and drive IoT in the commercial scene, and how to empower smart cities to drive digital transformation of the whole society and economy. wavespace™ in Beijing is located at the core zone of Financial Street which is near the regulatory institutions, and the headquarters of financial, insurance and telecom institutions. It focuses on innovative change and speeding up the transformation of Chinese enterprises and financial institutions. It keeps extending and intensifying the building of eco-cooperation networks. It connects various parties, including companies, investors and incubators; explores with them the business applications of forefront technologies, such as smart cities, FinTech and smart health care; and continuously intensifies innovative eco-cooperation alliance based in Beijing.”

With the influence of the pandemic and national policies, an increasing number of traditional enterprises are aware that it is imperative to implement digital transformation, and they will drive digitalization of industries and intensify its integration with the real economy. From creating client-based all-channel digital experience to moving data to cloud, when facing the digital transformation needs of Chinese corporate clients, wavespace™ uses an immersive touch screen interaction environment, designs ideas-driven co-building experience, and integrates EY’s consulting solutions and eco-resources to help clients apply innovative ideology tools and forefront technologies to drive their transformation, innovation and continuous growth of business. In the end, it works with various industries to “create a digital future” together.

After the opening day, wavespace™ will also have an open week of activities in the next two days, including holding four major forums focusing on retail, TMT, energy and financial industries to discuss with leaders of various industries about ways to manage change in the industries in the next round of technological revolution.

¹ Ernst & Young (China) Advisory Limited

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