Digital trend is here to stay

Bridging skills gap
Despite a growing crypto community, Auyang says Hong Kong is not the leader in blockchain development due to a lack of tech talent. "Overall, we do have tech talent in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, but in Hong Kong, we don't have enough of them. Shenzhen has seen relatively good growth in its talent pool and Hong Kong should really look at the matter seriously."
To fill the gap in technology skills, the Hong Kong government, institutes and the private sector have ramped up cooperation with their counterparts on the Chinese mainland, integrating into the Greater Bay Area.

The future Northern Metropolis - a grand plan to reshuffle the city's landscape and economy - was unveiled by Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor in the last policy address of her current tenure on Oct 6. Known as the Northern Metropolis Development Strategy, the mega project aims to ease Hong Kong's long-standing housing and land shortage problems and promote economic integration with Shenzhen and the other cities in the Greater Bay Area cluster.

A new information and technology park known as San Tin Technopole, covering an estimated area of 1,100 hectares, will be launched to facilitate technology development in areas like research and development, advanced manufacturing and life-health sciences.
"Hong Kong companies have shown increasing interest in integrating their businesses into the Greater Bay Area," says Sam Wong Tsz-wa, general manager at TusPark (Tsinghua University Science Park) Hong Kong - a start-up incubator.

"The cost of starting a business in Hong Kong is higher," he notes. "If you can't sustain a team, there is nothing more to talk about."

For startups, the mainland cities of the Greater Bay Area could offer a better foundation for industrial use of their products, while in Hong Kong, the scenario is often limited to tailor-made solutions. "If you have the technology, it's easier to get funding on the mainland after standardizing it and applying it to industrial use. For Hong Kong, it's more difficult," says Wong.
For this year's tech trends, he expects three sectors to be vibrant - data application, continual digital transformation and biotechnology.

Wong's worried that the investment frenzy in the crypto boom will remove hot money from startups focusing on hardcore technology. "We are not introducing such (crypto) companies into the incubator," he adds.