Big companies turn to smaller ones to solve problems

An increasing number of large-scale domestic and foreign companies have participated in the business incubation platform in Beijing's Haidian district as part of the national innovation-driven development strategy.

The big companies have become the major force for establishing company incubators since 2017, according to Beijing Z-innoway Technology Services, a government-funded company that runs service agencies for entrepreneurs in Haidian district.

Four out of five newly established incubators in Haidian district since 2017 were founded by big companies such as DC Holdings and Baidu.

Nie Lixia, general manager of the company, said traditional large-scale companies have started working with incubation platforms to find smaller partners that can solve their problems more efficiently at lower cost.

"In the past, large companies tended to use their own staffs to solve technical or market problems," she said. "Now, they use our platform to help them find the appropriate teams of people who can solve their problems. And then the big companies will invest in those teams to build startups."

About 30 big companies have cooperated with incubation institutes since 2017.

During the 2018 National Mass Innovation and Entrepreneurship Week in Beijing from Oct 9 to 15, Sinosteel Scie-tech Development, a large group focusing on steel and related new materials development, held a meeting to find startup teams to cooperate in sectors including wireless charging, chemical compounds and magnetic materials.

The company formed a partnership with Z-innoway Technology Services in June.

"We raised our needs and requirements to Z-innoway and they helped us to find the innovative teams that can solve our problems," said Wang Shouye, general manager of Sinosteel Scie-tech Development and chairman of Sinosteel Technology Incubator. "The efficiency has been greatly increased through this method, compared with using our own resources."

According to Wang, Z-innoway chose the eight teams that were the best matches for the company.

"We don't have that much time to do this, and our information resources are limited," he said. "Through cooperation with Z-innoway and after listening to the presentations of the eight teams, we got more ideas about the direction of our innovation direction for the future."

He said the means of cooperation include co-financing, establishing funds and investing directly in the teams.

Zhang Chao, board secretary of subsidiary Sinosteel Anhui Tianyuan Technology, attended the meeting with startups and said his scope was expanded by the communication.

"We will invest about 500 million yuan ($72 million) in the three sectors, and those teams have provided very useful ideas," he said. "It's possible to cooperate with any of them."