A view of Lujiazui Financial District in Shanghai, a city supportive of innovation and entrepreneurship. [Photo/IC]

Shanghai, a city supportive of innovation and entrepreneurship, has successfully attracted well-known foreign companies by optimizing its business environment.

Following the trend of open innovation among large-scale global enterprises, more than 30 Fortune 500 companies have cooperated with XNode, a maker space in Shanghai, for endogenous innovation and cooperative innovation.

Intel for example has generated revenue by turning creative ideas into products with XNode since 2017. The program gained access to the local government’s special funds set up for innovative enterprises.

Committed to endogenous innovation, the program encourages employees to envision innovative projects and transform them into products like entrepreneurs while doing their original jobs, according to Kapil Kane, the creative director.

At present, the program involves about 100 Chinese employees and has converted eight creative plans into real products, generating $20 million in revenue.

Different from Intel, BMW chooses cooperative innovation as the road to launch innovative products and services through work done in concert by large companies and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

It has implemented six innovative projects, one of which, a block chain project carried out in cooperation with a Shanghai company recommended by XNode, has entered the German market.

The technological innovation office of BMW found that with the support of the municipal government, many high-level scientific SMEs were able to emerge in Shanghai in recent years, providing a fertile ground for large-scale enterprises to carry on cooperative innovation.

Given the concentration of multinational companies in Shanghai, Zhouwei, the founder of XNode, advised the municipal government to set up an exchange platform for the introduction of open innovation centers.

A batch of innovation centers of multinational companies will be conducive to the development of innovative SMEs in Shanghai and its construction as a world-leading hub of scientific and technological innovation.