Innovation Policy and High Growth Startups
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Governments frequently set policies to stimulate entrepreneurship but those policies vary and amended policies have not been fully articulated. We believe that no government policy in Hong Kong can their effectiveness is in dispute. In particular, not all entrepreneurship is of equal value: only a small fraction of survive unless it has the support of the Hong Kong people.This report hopes, through debate, to help reach a entrepreneurs make a substantial impact on the economy. While the stories of highly successful entrepreneurs consensus as to where policy should lie between the legacy of laissez faire and the other extreme of state- are well known, the conditions that stimulate high growth entrepreneurship in general are not. This study seeks interventionism, in order to support high growth expectations entrepreneurship as effectively as possible. to add to our understanding of the government's policies intended to stimulate high growth entrepreneurship in Hong Kong by comparing them with the situation elsewhere in the world. We draw the following the tentative conclusions to serve as discussion points for the forum of 25 May 2006: • There are strong economic arguments for providing public funding for R&D in industries where Hong Kong We used three sources of data for our study. already has a comparative advantage. •Asurvey of 505,000 interviews in 44 countries carried out between 1999 and 2004; • The sensitivity of the Hong Kong government to public opinion, its lack of a clear political mandate and • In-depth interviews with 16 key policy-makers and implementers in the Hong Kong government (see the need for transparency in policies means that Hong Kong is not well suited to handle complex schemes Appendix I); to stimulate high growth companies. • Secondary published sources from government, the press and academe. •Government-sponsored angel investment has been modestly successful and should be expanded. • The government should not play the role of venture capitalist in Hong Kong Our key findings are as follows. • The GEM Board has not lived up to its expectations but can provide valuable expansion capital availability to high growth entrepreneurial firms if restructured as a junior, institutional-investor-only,greater China board Hong Kong's proportion of entrepreneurial activity that expects to achieve high growth is only slightly of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong. below the world average. This statistic measures the percentage of the population starting firms that anticipate • Educational resources should continue to be channeled towards increasing the flexibility of the Hong Kong hiring over 20 persons within five years.The finding contrasts with Hong Kong's total entrepreneurship activity education system in order to stimulate creativity and aspiration towards entrepreneurship. rate, which shows Hong Kong as much less entrepreneurial than the rest of the world. This means that a larger •Policy attention should be turned to strengthening the attractiveness of Hong Kong as a destination for high percentage of Hong Kong startup companies actually anticipate growing rapidly compared with startup companies quality human capital from Hong Kong itself, from other parts of Greater China and from the whole world. elsewhere in the world. In Shenzhen, however, a much larger proportion of start-up firms expect to achieve high growth. In Hong Kong, 60 percent of the jobs anticipated to be created by entrepreneurs are accounted We first present survey statistics of high expectations entrepreneurship in Hong Kong, comparing them for by those with high expectations. Worldwide, high growth expectation entrepreneurship is dominated by with our sister city, Shenzhen, and with other parts of the world, using data from the Global Entrepreneurship wealthy,young, well educated males. In Hong Kong, while the sex and wealth biases persist, the education bias Monitor (See Appendixes II and III). We review how Hong Kong's policies on entrepreneurship have evolved does not: in Hong Kong higher education is not a common route to high-growth entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship from traditional positive non-intervention, through the new philosophy put forward by Professor Tien Chang- with high growth expectations in Hong Kong is concentrated in consumer services, not in manufacturing, lin (田長霖)inthe early years of the Tung Chee Hua (董建華) administration, to the current government's transportation, utilities and other transforming industries. approach of promotion of industrial and research clusters, and discuss the premise that promotion of high growth entrepreneurship is achieved by promoting high technology. The study concludes with a discussion of the human Hong Kong's government policies towards high expectations entrepreneurship have changed substantially in resource development, financial programs and infrastructures required to achieve the new policy. recent years. Hong Kong has been traditionally characterized by the laissez faire approach - free trade, low taxes and small government, regular budget surpluses, minimal interference with market forces, no long-term state planning (with the exception of infrastructure, housing and health care) and no development subsidies or investment incentives. Although the degree of government involvement has increased as Hong Kong has evolved from a fishing village to an entrepôt, to an export manufacturing center, and, after the open door policy of China, to a business service center, and although modest support programs for small and middle sized enterprises have existed, the government has refrained from direct subsidies and investment incentives.After the 1997 handover and the Asian Financial Crisis, the business sector and the government became concerned with Hong Kong's eroding competitiveness, attributed by some to low technology. A new philosophy was implemented involving more direct efforts to support technology development, such as more generous funding of research and developemnt (R&D), building incubators, and providing financing for high growth potential enterprises. These efforts, however, have been subject to resistance, cynicism, bureaucratic inefficiency and a volatile economic environment. Although II III Innovation Policy and High Growth Startups Innovation Policy and High Growth Startups Summary Summary Entrepreneurship brings growth, employment and flexibility to economies, yet the mechanisms are not government policy has changed since the early years of this decade, the philosophies behind the original and well understood. Governments frequently set policies to stimulate entrepreneurship but those policies vary and amended policies have not been fully articulated. We believe that no government policy in Hong Kong can their effectiveness is in dispute. In particular, not all entrepreneurship is of equal value: only a small fraction of survive unless it has the support of the Hong Kong people.This report hopes, through debate, to help reach a entrepreneurs make a substantial impact on the economy. While the stories of highly successful entrepreneurs consensus as to where policy should lie between the legacy of laissez faire and the other extreme of state- are well known, the conditions that stimulate high growth entrepreneurship in general are not. This study seeks interventionism, in order to support high growth expectations entrepreneurship as effectively as possible. to add to our understanding of the government's policies intended to stimulate high growth entrepreneurship in Hong Kong by comparing them with the situation elsewhere in the world. We draw the following the tentative conclusions to serve as discussion points for the forum of 25 May 2006: • There are strong economic arguments for providing public funding for R&D in industries where Hong Kong We used three sources of data for our study. already has a comparative advantage. •Asurvey of 505,000 interviews in 44 countries carried out between 1999 and 2004; • The sensitivity of the Hong Kong government to