By Simin Yang, Project Coordinator Innovation & Entrepreneurship
On May 7, 2020, we hosted our webinar titled The Shenzhen Way of Open Innovation. We trust that everyone has acquired informative insights on the topic. Due to time constraints, we could only present a limited number of questions. If you have further questions for our speakers, please email us at innovation@swissnexchina.org. We will try our best to forward them to the speakers.
We would like to express our appreciation to our speaker Eric Pan, Founder of Seeed Studio and Chaihuo makerspace and moderator Raffael Tschui, Partner at Octanis Instruments and Engineering coach of the China Hardware Innovation Camp (CHIC), for sharing your insights, as well as our audiences for your great engagement.
The webinar recording is available to view and download here.
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Shenzhen is a major technology hub that produces the most hardware and electronic devices in the world. With R&D budgets going up across several industries, hardware suppliers seek to climb up the value chain with more sophisticated, higher-end products. This has gradually changed the partnership model.
In Shenzhen, as an entrepreneur, you have the opportunity to immerse yourself in the biggest and most innovative hardware hub in the world. With the unique ecosystem rapidly evolving, startups need a flexible mindset and be prepared to redefine their relationship with the suppliers.
How should entrepreneurs be prepared for a win-win partnership? What is Shenzhen's way of open innovation? With these questions, we are honored to have our distinguished guests with us, to share their views.
Our moderator Raffael Tschui, Partner at Octanis Instruments and Engineering coach of the China Hardware Innovation Camp (CHIC) is an electronics engineer based in Lausanne, Switzerland. Six years ago, Raffael had his first experience building hardware with CHIC program. He was able to build everything from scratch. For Raffael, Shenzhen is like a gigantic makerspace. Any imaginable subcomponent of your product will be available somewhere, as well as the capacity to produce it in millions. But the “factory of the world” is much more than that. It is also home to some of the most innovative technology companies such as Xiaomi, Huawei, Tencent and more.
Our speaker, Eric Pan, Founder of Seeed Studio and Chaihuo makerspace, is a producer of Maker Faire Shenzhen. He endeavors to integrate the latest AI/IoT technology and supply chain resources to create an open platform for global developers. Since 2008, Seeed has been empowering millions of developers in over 200 countries to turn ideas into prototypes and solutions.
Here are some key takeaways that we would like to share with you.
Seeed studio has created Shenzhen map for foreign companies to easily find a hardware maker. Eric particularly mentioned Huaqiangbei, where you can almost find all your hardware components in order to build up your prototype in an easy and fast way. This map will help foreign companies to navigate the hardware manufactures.
Major obstacles for foreign companies when they come to Shenzhen for manufacturing
Lack of understanding: the hardware producers don’t understand clients’ demand, while the clients are not sure if the hardware producer is trustworthy.
Differences between software and hardware production: hardware needs a bigger team
Culture impact beyond languages
Missing knowhow during the prototype process can lead failures
The hardware itself has no value, hardware should meet the market’s demand. And the market also needs time to mature. Team diversity is important for setting up manufacturing, but the management of a diversified team can also be challenging.
For IoT startups, the real value is the upstream tech and applications they can bring to market, instead of just the hardware itself.
Eric suggests, startups should not design for the purpose of manufacturing but to work with the ecosystem to improve the design.
Design for manufacturability (sometimes also known as design for manufacturing or DFM) is the general engineering practice of designing products in such a way that they are easy to manufacture. The concept exists in almost all engineering disciplines, but the implementation differs widely depending on the manufacturing technology. DFM describes the process of designing or engineering a product to facilitate the manufacturing process to reduce its manufacturing costs.
Eric also laid out the manufacturing process & quality control process.
In the Q&A Session，there were also inspiring discussions between Eric and the audiences.
Q: How to start a POC (Proof of Concept) or prototype?
Eric: Professional engineers start from the components, which is very challenging. The recommended way is to start by using a solution, and to change the solution for your purpose, for example reuse or mix the solutions by leveraging existing resources.
Q: How do you find a good supplier?
Eric: Keep trying. In the first 3 months when I just moved to Shenzhen, I went to Huaqiangbei every day to try to understand the hardware ecosystem, the supplier, and the market.
Raffael: It is very easy to get to know the sales channels, support contacts when you just simply go to Shenzhen, Huaqiangbei in person.
Q: What is the most common issue that causes failure for suppliers and startups?
Eric: Mutual respect from suppliers and yourself and respect the cultural difference. People need to adjust themselves to adapt to cooperation.
