On July 12th, the Launching Meeting of Italian Global Start up Program in Shanghai was successfully held in Shanghai Technology Innovation Center (STIC). Officials from Consulate General of Italy in Shanghai, Italian Trade Agency (ITA), Science and Technology Committee of Shanghai Municipality and Shanghai Technology Innovation Center, together with four co-organizing accelerators (i.e. Caohejing Innovation Center, XNode, InnoSpace, neoBay), entrepreneurship mentors, industrial experts as well as other local stakeholders attended the meeting to witness the initiation of the Program and discussed how to support cross-border development of startups.
On the occasion of celebrating the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and Italy, the Ministry of Economic Development of Italy has initiated the Global Start up Program in Shanghai. The planning of this program started from two visits of Mr. Michele Geraci (Undersecretary of State, Ministry of Economic Development, Italy) in Shanghai in November 2018 and December 2018. Mr. Michele Geraci investigated the internationalization of inno-ecosystem in Shanghai and put forward the preliminary ideas on cooperation with Shanghai Technology Innovation Center. With the effective follow-up communication, the framework of this program became an innovative practice in responding to the multifaceted strategic framework for in-depth cooperation reached by the national leaders of China and Italy in March 2019. Italian Trade Agency is responsible for the implementation of the Program, actively supporting the internationalization of Italian startups in cross-border business expansion and innovative collaboration.
The first edition of the Italian Global Startup Program links with the inno-ecosystems in Slovenia, the United Kingdom, the United States, China, Japan and Republic of Korea. For China, Shanghai is the first landing city. Italian Trade Agency Shanghai Office (ITA Shanghai Office) and Shanghai Technology Innovation Center (STIC) will jointly implement the Program with 4 accelerators (i.e. Caohejing Innovation Center, XNode, InnoSpace and neoBay) as co-organizers. It is also the first time for several Shanghai-based accelerators to work like a group in providing complementary resources and integrated services for a cross-border scale up program. The outputs of this Program are highly anticipated.
The first batch of 11 Italian startups coming to China will be provided with a three-month acceleration service, which will cover a wide range of trainings and workshops to share entrepreneurship knowledge, to investigate business environment, to optimize technical solutions, to link with industrial resources, to network with investors, etc. The Program is not simply a business matching event; it involves an output-oriented process of serving. Inputs and outputs are centered on specific goals such as diagnosis of technical solution or optimization of business model.
With both challenges and opportunities ahead, it will be a unique journey for Italian startups to adapt to Chinese culture, to learn & digest knowledge, to expand business and so on. The journey will also be shared with the public in due time to achieve more interaction and localized integration.
The key words of the Launching Meeting are "integrated servics" and "collaborative effects". Indeed, it is the first cross-border accelerating program in Shanghai which is mainly designed and coordinated by a non-profitable public service organization affiliated to Shanghai government, and jointly co-organized by four carefully-selected local accelerators. Dating back to the early 2016, Overseas Startup Gateway Program (GATEWAY Network) was initiated by Shanghai Technology Innovation Center with the goal of implementing suck kind of collaborative programs.
In recent years, both Chinese and foreign governments have paid great attention to optimize local inno-ecosystems for startups, making it one of the cornerstones for economic growth and innovative competitiveness. With Shanghai being an innovation center of global collaboration, more and more local incubators and accelerators have well-designed business models and gain rich experiences on cross-border programs. The challenges ahead will no longer focus on the capability of an incubator; it will more emphasize tolerance and openness of the inno-ecosystem and the collaborative capabilities among different players. The Italian Global Start up Program is such a great opportunity to validate the capability of public services offered by Shanghai government and the collaborative effects of local accelerators in cross-border businesses.
The Launching Meeting led to a round of heated discussion on cross-border development and co-innovation of startups. Insightful views from our distinguished speakers are listed as follows.
China and Italy enjoy a long history of friendship. More than 2,000 years ago, the ancient Silk Road already closely linked the two faraway countries, China and Ancient Roman together. Nowadays, Shanghai is the perfect landing city for overseas startups to enter Chinese market. In Shanghai, Italian startups will not only directly join in the competition with their counterparts at home and abroad, but also gain easy accesses to their partners along the industry chain as well as their potential customers.
Italy is a research power in a way; we are doing a lot of research in the world. We have 1.2% of researchers of the world; we do 3.5% of all scientific publications in the world. The efficiency of researchers in Italy is very strong. We have a lot of collaborations with universities in China……But the problem is the shift between research and innovation. This initiation of the Start up Program comes from making more efficient transfer between research in which we are strong, and innovation. Today, we walk; today, we walk the walk. And this is what we can do: always walking the walk.
Startup is about innovation and internationalization; innovation and internationalization are today two key words on the industry policy of the current Italian government and the guidelines for our Italian Trade Agency. And I see there are two important reasons to be glad about the Launching Meeting today. The first one is the friendship between China and Italy, which opens a new era and lot of opportunities for business cooperation upon the signature and the participation by Italy to your very good One Belt and One Road Initiative. The second, as you know, the purpose of this program is to promote and accelerate the growth of younger companies, to handle the damage, to translate development into industrialization, to join the industrialization with business relationship and marketing capabilities.
During the implementation of Horizon 2020 program from 2017 to 2019, STIC has had in-depth cooperation with National Research Council of Italy and thus established the profound friendship with Italian partners. Today, the Italian Global Start up Program offers us another opportunity to cooperate with Italian Trade Agency in jointly supporting startups. This time, our cooperation will closely touch upon the key topics such as economic growth and innovation ecosystem.
The inno-ecosytem in Shanghai is of large scale with 110 startup nurseries, 13 accelerators, 183 incubators and 222 maker spaces. This large-scale system means a wealth of options and well-organized management leads to efficient matching; that's the reason why we could select and gather four local incubators in such a short period to provide collaborative services for the Program.
Caohejing Innovation Center is part of Shanghai International Business Incubation (Shanghai IBI) and one of the first batch of GATEWAY members. I am grateful to the trust from Shanghai Technology Innovation Center and also feel honored that Caohejing Innovation Center has been chosen as one of the four co-organizing accelerators. I firmly believe that our rich experiences on cross-border programs and rich resources of corporations & SMEs will efficiently support Italian startups and enhance the possibility of cross-border development for them.
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