Innovation enhances competitiveness of a business and adds values to products and services. However, innovation is never an easy job. It involves substantial costs, time and resources. Never does it possible without any subsidies and great support. Thus, government and business sectors in Hong Kong (HK) have spent tons of effort and adopt various policies on innovation to enhance economic growth and its competitiveness. The followings will be a brief abstract of the role of government and business sectors on innovation in HK:
1. Overview of Hong Kong innovation activities:
1.1 Recent trend of innovation activities in HK
Innovation can be distinguished by technological, involved improvement on goods, and non-technological innovation, involved management theories of businesses From Graph 1 below, it is found that innovation activities taken in HK in recent years were mainly non-technological innovation activities. In 2005, 48% of the firms, increased from 14% in 2001, in HK undertook these activities. It is mostly because HK’s main industry is the service industry. Improvement on management and companies’ structure are necessary to maintain its leading status in service industry. Most importantly, Graph 1 shows the number of overall innovation activities kept increasing with time. It shows a trend of increasing importance of innovation activities.
1.2 Increasing number of Research and Development (R&D) personnel
From Table 1 below, it shows the number of R&D personnel in Hong Kong increased substantially since 2001. In 2005, 22054 people were engaged in R&D, up from 11041 people in 2001. They are mostly working for the business and higher education sectors, having 55% and 43% of the number of R& ...