Pictures of the Future      Fall 2005

Innovations in the Land of the Dragon

In response to China’s growing importance as a research location, Siemens Corporate Technology is speeding up its formation of a team that will develop solutions for China and the global market.

Keep things moving" is Dr. Arding Hsu’s motto—and Hsu, who heads Siemens Corporate Technology (CT) in China, isn’t just referring to the country’s nine percent annual growth rate. To ensure that Siemens’ research activities remain in tune with the market—and to improve cooperation with partners—Siemens is rapidly establishing a new research center in China. It was for this reason that Hsu, who was born in China but is western-oriented, came to Beijing at the end of last year. Hsu studied in the U.S., where he lived for 30 years. For the last 21 years, he has worked for Siemens, most recently as CEO and President of the Siemens Technology-to-Business Center in Berkeley, California, where Siemens works with start-ups and universities to transform innovations into products as quickly as possible.

Hsu says he’s surprised by the speed at which Chinese companies are currently penetrating global markets and acquiring competitors, and also by how fast Chinese scientists have succeeded in "becoming world-class" in research areas such as communications, gaming and life sciences.

He’s also discovered something else since he arrived in Beijing: "Young people in China are strongly influenced by a dynamic entrepreneurial spirit; with the right leadership they could fast achieve amazing results." That’s why Hsu is convinced he will be able to recruit from an extensive pool of talented individuals. He’s also convinced that "we can benefit from this resource not only in the Chinese market, but also in the global market." Hsu adds that "it is more important here than at other locations to work closely with up-andcoming companies and use innovations as a vehicle to create win-win strategies."

Siemens has 22,000 employees in China. These people generated sales of around four billion euros in fiscal 2004. A small team of researchers led by Dr. Martin Scheurer has been working in Beijing since 1999. Since 2004, CT’s presence has been steadily expanded and now includes some 120 researchers in Beijing and Shanghai. Plans call for this number to increase to 300 by 2007.

Healthcare is one of the main research areas. Others include communications, automation and automotive engineering. And Hsu is interested in all other Siemens business areas too. The CT Lab in Beijing is also involved in patent protection and standardization issues.

The facility houses a mixture of physicists, computer scientists, engineers and business developers. Most are from China but some, like Hsu, have come back "home" from abroad. "If you’re going to stimulate innovation and transform innovations into marketable products, you need to have an excellent and experienced management team that recruits young scientists and asks them the right tough questions to bring them to the world-class level," says Hsu, who admires the dedication of young Chinese scientists and the breathtaking speed at which they are assembling knowledge.

Experts such as Roland Chin, Professor of Computer Science and a Vice President of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), believe China will move ahead of Germany, the UK and Japan in the next five years to become the second most important center of research and development for international corporations after the United States.

Versatile Research Strategy. In particular, Hsu plans to focus on the following:
^? Cutting-edge technologies such as those used for the development of fourth-generation mobile communications systems. The latter will offer even higher data transfer rates than UMTS and provide mobile broadband access to the Internet. Here, CT is working with several Chinese and German universities in the "FuTUR" program (as part of China’s Research Initiative 863) as well as in the EU’s Wireless World Initiative New Radio (WINNER) project. CT researchers are working on optimizing existing radio networks through the use of multi-antenna systems for transmission and reception as well as a special transmission procedure known as OFDM. (see Pictures of the Future, Fall 2004, "Always Online").
^? Effective technologies particularly suited to the Chinese market. These include solutions for a low-cost vehicle for the large number of people living in rural areas, who only need cars to transport goods and travel short distances.
^? Alternative technologies first for China as an emerging market and later for the global market. Hsu’s strategy here is to "use Chinese customer needs and their environment to derive different approaches that are simple, cheap, and easy to use and maintain. The solutions could also prove relevant for developed markets."

Alternative Medical Technology. The combination of different fields of technology plays a major role in all three research approaches. For example, Hsu is thinking about having researchers in the field of medical technology in Beijing develop alternative diagnostic techniques based on a mixture of traditional Chinese medicine and Western high-tech diagnostics.

Although many research projects are still in their preliminary stages at CT in China, the groundwork for innovation has already been laid in many areas. Hsu has another reason why speedy progress is important: "China is a country in which it is very important that Siemens lives up to its reputation as a socially responsible company," he says. "The gap between rich and poor is growing in China at the moment; a lot of people are still living in poor conditions, have no access to clean water and are suffering from the effects of a polluted environment."

In response to these problems, Hsu wants to establish a think tank in Beijing that will serve as a forum for bringing together government representatives, universities and customers to organize programs to help underprivileged groups. "Plans call for the forum to meet once or twice a year and also to operate a website that will serve as a venue for fruitful discussions," Hsu explains. "Basically we just want to keep things moving."
                                                                                                              Nikola Wohllaib