創 新 及 科 技 發 展 新 策 略 諮 詢 Consultation on New Strategy of Innovation and Technology Development

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1 創 新 及 科 技 發 展 新 策 略 諮 詢 Consultation on New Strategy of Innovation and Technology Development Reply Form This form is also available for download at - or Name : Organisation: Contact Tel.: [Deleted] [Deleted] The Government would like to hear the views of the public on the new strategy of innovation and technology development, particularly the proposed technology focus areas and the proposal of establishing R&D Centres. Technology focus areas 1. Comment on definition and scope of 13 proposed focus area HMSICA thinks that there should be a software R&D centre. Topics of R&D will be 1. GRID computing and how it can help HK business development, 2. GUI development tools for LINUX environment (to be sold to all HK software developers and world wide developers), 3. Porting/testing center for Legacy system, and; 4. Development tools for all future important software platforms, e.g. digital TV platform, 3G, 4G mobile phone platform, on-line game platform. (More details on each topic can be provided at a later stage) 2. Suggestions on addition or deletion of focus areas As mentioned above, software industry should be added as one of the focus areas, just like water is important, and it is everywhere, nobody notice it is important until it is gone. Software as an industry will need careful attention from the government authorities to support it, and publicly announce its support and fund it to let it serve all industries. Moreover, a lot of the results of the R&D centre can be sold as software, the know-how of software distribution and marketing will be crucial to the success and return on investment of all these R&D centres.

2 Neglecting software as an important industry will not only kill the software industry but also all the other focus area will suffer. As for each of the 13 industries, a detailed industry analysis will be required; for example, the car industry is dominated by Japan country brand, and German Country brand in China, the Brand owner will tie very closely to its accessory supplier and dictate the price and quality of the products, the suppliers are protected via Patents (like the rain brush on cars) only, based simple observation, the industry is heavily biased on the buyer side. So any result form the R&D centre will be very difficult to make big money unless government regulation make the product a must for the car industry (like air bags). Using Michael Porter's terms in his book on Competitive Strategy, this is an industry of high entry barrier and heavy buyer influence. Profitability is not an easy task for new entrants with new R&D products. So we would like to suggest a detailed industry analysis for all the 13 proposed focus area, so that the business side-which is the major strategy shift from before for this consultation paper- side and profitability side will be closely examined and scrutinised before investment should be made. And in reality, Taiwan succeeded only in PC and the rest of the industry rise from the same seed. It is unrealistic to believe all 13 focus areas will bear fruit. A few success areas will be very good indeed. 3. Suggestions of key R&D topics under each of the proposed focus areas All 13 proposed focus area have software needs and their R&D result can be implemented via software to generate income, or they can use their R&D results as the major component of a software that can be sold via a hardware platform or specialized device, the obvious software outputs and software portion of their R&D fund usage for each one will be as follows: a) Advanced Manufacturing Technologies - integration with ERP system to maximise the benefits of such techniques and process into the data work flow. - integration of the process with quality control/monitoring software so that the total value add of the new technologies are higher and easier to market and proliferate. b) Automotive Parts and Accessory Systems - Bluetooth technology (a software platform requiring lots of software content) to integrate various accessory system inside the car and a testing centre for such software testing and quality control services. - Linux operating system for the whole car to control and monitor all process inside the car.

3 c) Chinese Medicine - Expert system to help diagnosis and accumulation of human diagnosis record for future reference. - Knowledge management system to help accumulate knowledge and manage data/logs/information gathered via research and development process inside the respective R&D centres. d) Communication Technologies - Software development support and methodologies for long term viability of any software developed for a new communication technology, documentation standards, and maintenance support of software developed on all funded R&D. - Linux support and standardising a development platform for all new communication technologies. e) Consumer Electronics - Research and development on Standardisation of all consumer electronics operation system software, thereby reducing cost of the software inside all consumer electronics and allows them to interconnect to each other, one of the vision of IPV6 is allowing all electronic devices to have an id so they can know who and what device an electronic device is talking to. - Consumer Electronic Software trading centre and customisation centre. Such software will require on-going support and maintenance service. f) Digital Entertainment - Game engine research and development. - Software tools and deployment support for all digital entertainment development projects. - Research on High speed super computer for graphic processing. - GRID computing to allow cheap high speed computers to serve the need of digital entertainment development. - Research on deployment platform for digital entertainment. - Research and development on H.264 to improve the quality and cost of digital entertainment deployment. g) Display Technologies - Knowledge management system for research and development on such display technologies, all data gathered will be properly monitored and passed on to users and commercialisation agencies. h) Integrated circuit design - Knowledge management system to allow all the other research centres to know that we have such and such IC design available for their deployment, e.g. Medical diagnosis using IC - a.k.s digital diagnosis on chip. - Expert system development using IC design to enhanced the speed of neural network processing.

4 i) Logistics/Supply Chain Management Enabling Technologies. - Research on how all software can be developed and integrated to RFID so that the whole supply chain can be improved. - Knowledge management system to allow such knowledge to be distributed and accumulated for usage in all industries. j) Medical diagnostics and devices - Software platform developed to allow expert systems of diagnosis to perform and interface with the human using such diagnostics and devises k) Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials - Application and development of quality control software that helps the depolyment and production of advanced materials developed in the R&D center. l) Opto-electronics m) Textile and Clothings - Application and development of quality control software that helps the depolyment and production of advanced materials developed in the R&D center. 2. Suggestions on addition or deletion of focus areas Software centre should be added to the focus areas, as illustrated from the above, all R&D will have software contents and their development, deployment, maintenance, and marketing of such software will require the discipline and experience of software industry experts. And knowledge management software is a very important market for the future, both for the knowledge management software platform, and the knowledge to be managed by such platform. Further more, for all the R&D centres proposed, the knowledge management system should be crucial in 3 ways: 1. Standardisation on the platform to allow cross reference and knowledge sharing. 2. Documentation to allow legacy knowledge to be carried on for different teams to do the R&D.

5 3. A clear show case to allow public and the supervising authorities to know and monitor the progress since such R&D is done using public money. And whether such R&D is generally on its project roadmap and the whether the time to success will catch the market boom. For example, if LCD TV is under development, and the cost reduction via the R&D center is competitive now, but after 1 year of development, the market price of LCD TV had dropped to such an extent the R&D centre will need to produce a technology that is 10 times cheaper, well beyond the ability of the working team, the supervising authority should consult expert on the viability of the project. We think that adding software/it as a focus area not only promote the software/it industry in Hong Kong for the good of the existing 70,000 local software/it workforce but also would be in line with the national policy of establishing it as one of the pillar industries for China. We can also leverage the proactive and incentive preferential policy and programs of the Mainland central and provincial governments to place Hong Kong in a leading position in the software/it industry in the pan-prd (pan Pearl River Delta) region. With this, Hong Kong, together with its pan-prd counterparts, would be in a better position to contend for the vast Software Outsource market particularly in the United States and Europe. Adding this software/it focus area will also play a horizontal infrastructure role to serve the other 13 focus areas to avoid duplication and hence wastage in investment. Furthermore, our association are very keen to participate in the development of each of the future R & D center for other focused industries, especially in the contribution of software industry knowledge, act as a bridge to the gap between Mainland China and Hong Kong, and providing the workforce to develop the required software for each R & D center. For any further questions, please feel free to contact our association representative, Ms Pauline Chan. From ITC sub committee, HMSICA (Ringo Chan, Joe Lok, William Chan and Ted Chan)