How 'smart' guitar struck a chord

Innovation incubator in Beijing's Haidian Book City area offers help to entrepreneurs, including company behind easy-to-play Poputar and Populele

Zhang Bohan used to stroll over to the Haidian Book City in northwest Beijing in 2005. The cultural landmark, one of the largest bookstores in the Chinese capital, was the ideal place for the then 15-year-old guitar-lover to buy CDs. At that time, it would have been impossible for him to predict that the old building at the center of Zhongguancun industrial zone would be transformed into a nationwide incubator for entrepreneurship and innovation.

The Zhongguancun Inno Way company, which has its headquarters in the Haidian Book City area, is now a landmark of innovation, with various well-known incubators, such as Garage Cafe, Kr Space and Legend Star.

As "a platform of incubators," the Inno Way has met with great success in the past three years, serving as a bridge for both Chinese and international startups, markets and investment.

Three years ago, after inventing a smart guitar, Zhang started a business, Popumusic, after dropping out of the University of California, San Diego.

In the beginning, even his parents tried to talk him out of the idea. Yet nothing could change his mind.

Many of his friends had given up playing guitar without even really trying, because they found it too hard to learn.

"Why not develop an easy-to-play smart guitar," he thought.

His confidence and courage were stimulated by the government's encouragement of mass entrepreneurship and innovation in the country.

Vigorous efforts were made in China to implement the innovation-driven development strategy, such as the promulgation of the Outline of the National Strategy of Innovation-Driven Development and the launch of programs for major science, technology and innovation projects.

In May 2016, the Poputar smart guitar's first crowdfunding was launched through e-commerce and received rave reviews. In one month, 4,000 guitars were sold in advance with more than 3 million yuan ($435,600; 396,600 euros; ￡335,800) raised. Six months later, Zhang's other product, the Populele (a smart ukulele) also succeeded in its crowdfunding, with 6,000 sold out in 10 hours.

"The strong sales of the Poputar and Populele have expanded the traditional guitar market," says Li Wei, the company's marketing director.

In the first quarter of this year, the company bagged two of the top three international production design awards-the iF Design Award in February and the Red Dot Design Award in March.

As one of the innovation enterprises hatched in the Zhongguancun Inno Way, PopuMusic's success has taken advantage of the current wave of innovation and entrepreneurship in China.

"This is a down-to-earth and inclusive platform," Zhang says. "It provides startups with great support for building up teams and solving technique and finance problems. It gave me more confidence to face all the difficulties at the very beginning."

In the opinion of Yao Hongbo, chairman of the Zhongguancun Inno Way's operating company, Beijing Haizhikechuang Technology Service, the ongoing wave of business startups in China is distinguished from the former wave in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

"We used to produce pants and now we make aircraft - you can see the huge difference," he says.

China is trying to transform and upgrade from a manufacturing country to an intellectual manufacturing country, where innovation is the most important catalyst.

PopuMusic has also been looking at international cooperation. Since last month, the company has been carrying out its first crowdfunding for the Populele in the United States, with a target amount of $500,000.

The company is considering producing guitars in South Asia and has been keeping in touch with an Italian manufacturer on the possibility of using machines to replace some of the human labor in the production.

Zhang has an even bolder idea. He plans to build a social platform for music lovers in the United States to promote self-learning and smart-learning of instruments throughout the world.

Chinese innovative enterprises like PopuMusic are looking forward to expanding into overseas markets, while foreign startups are seeking better development in China. Both share the same idea of making full use of global resources to innovate.

So far, Inno Way and other incubators have collaborated with 31 organizations from more than 10 countries in innovative exchanges, cross-border joint incubation programs and other cooperative projects. In all, 194 overseas returnees and foreign startups have taken root in this place.

Inno Way has held a global innovation roadshow called "Demo the world" annually since 2015 to attract innovation startups from all over the world. Some of the winning projects have become permanent fixtures in Zhongguancun, obtained financing from Chinese enterprises and become potential acquisition targets for international companies like Apple.

Xinhua

(China Daily Africa Weekly 05/12/2017 page22)