Shenzhen's Silicon Valley hot, Beijing hanging on the sidelines

Last year, a group of media Lab students from MIT visited Shenzhen to organise the event, with MIT Lab Media Director Joi Ito, the famous hardware hacker Bunnie who hacked the Xbox, and the founder of the LinkedIn Reid Hoffman and Dean of Massachusetts Institute of Technology Marty Schmidt. In a recall article from Joi Ito, the Shenzhen hardware manufacturing industry in the eyes of an MIT scholar, he visited the injection molding plant, the PCB factory, and the plant embedded in the chip on the circuit board ... Went to the hardware market like Huaqiang north and went to a company like the big Xinjiang, thoroughly shocked.

Finally, he said, in Shenzhen, they experience a complete ecosystem, low-cost Labor, they make Shenzhen is the most advanced world-class manufacturing base, the ecosystem by a large number of factories and manufacturing technology, can produce all sizes of hardware products.

In fact, it is not just Joi Ito and Reid Hoffman that are attracted to this complete ecosystem. Some foreign do smart watches, smart hats and smart speakers of the entrepreneur said that last year they were in Shenzhen Silicon Valley on both sides of the fly back and forth, two times a year in Shenzhen, for some time, and this year, then simply set up offices in Shenzhen, in fact, in addition to their friends, but also with the Shenzhen has more and more close Find a factory hub on the Chinese side.

You will find that the relationship between Shenzhen and Silicon Valley is becoming more and more "ambiguous", whether it is an ordinary creation or an academic institution or a government. This can be felt from some of the official unofficial events held in Shenzhen, perhaps one day you are meeting with a professor at UC Berkeley, or perhaps the director of the Future Institute, or the world's largest hardware accelerator haxlr8r partner, and so on.

In last month's second industrial design exhibition and the Android Forum in Shenzhen, in addition to the world's creation representatives, Silicon Valley's academic institutions, hardware start-up representative Chris Andressen, and MIT FabLab Laboratory director Neil and so on are also appearing in the venue, and behind this, In November, the Fab Lab also came to Shenzhen for a special trip to the United States at MIT bit and Yard Research Center Project manager Sherry Lassiter, MIT assistant Professor Nadyd peed and Massachusetts Institute of Technology Fab 12 authorized Commissioner David Jin.

The group of people who attended a small discussion event at the Industrial Design Association after seeing more representative hardware start-ups and creating spaces in Shenzhen, he took part in talks with the government and eventually set up the Fab Lab 2.0 Open Innovation Labs in Shenzhen, and Neil said the machine-building machine, fab LAB2.0 upgraded version was finalized in 2016 in Shenzhen.

On the other side, the reverse penetration of Shenzhen into Silicon Valley. January 5, 2015, as both sides want to promote the integration of business through the government, the two governments will jointly organize an event in Silicon Valley, both mayors will attend.

In addition to the Government, the attitude of private enterprises is also so positive. More than 90% of Seeed's orders come from overseas, and 90% of them are from the US, so they simply set up some of the production lines in Silicon Valley to better serve local companies. As the Shenzhen small apple of the Xinjiang, in addition to the establishment of the office in Los Angeles, San Francisco office is also under construction, we often see in the Xinjiang propaganda video of Eric Cheng, responsible for the San Francisco office affairs, as well as Hollywood, Silicon Valley business development.

If you think that the Silicon Valley is only the world famous Shenzhen Enterprises, then you are wrong. Some low-key start-ups are also looking to co-operate in the U.S. market, preferably Silicon Valley companies. Pingwest's 5-dimensional "smart hardware" event, to be held in San Francisco in January, will help Shenzhen and Silicon Valley hardware companies to dock.

It can be said that the main focus of Silicon Valley company is Shenzhen's supply chain, and Shenzhen's company is more of a fancy Silicon Valley channel, consumer market, PR and design. Whether it's a smart nursing device, a WiFi speaker or a sleep detector, blood pressure meter ... Their founders would ask me, "This is the market in the United States, so we want to Indiegogo or Kickstarter, can you help us find the local media or PR company?"

However, in the entrepreneurial center of Beijing, but do not see a similar phenomenon occurred. Although leading a few international science and technology to go out on the show more and more meetings, but you do not see so deep, friendly cooperation.

As my colleague Ai Yi said, "If there is a degree of segregation or even conflict between Beijing and Silicon Valley because of the differences in their entrepreneurial culture that has long been formed, then Silicon Valley and Shenzhen are well integrated." ”

In one respect, Shenzhen's proximity to Silicon Valley has not been brought to Beijing, but on the other hand, the relationship between Beijing and Shenzhen has never been so close and subtle.

The two need each other: Beijing needs Shenzhen's supply chain, Shenzhen is also inseparable from Beijing's design and marketing. So Shenzhen and Beijing between the very close, except the Nanshan A8 Music Building concentrated a large number of enterprises from Beijing to Shenzhen, there are some other places in the Jingdong, 360, roll-call time, Yun Zhishong and so on, in terms of quantity, The high frequency of companies from Beijing to Shenzhen and its employees between Beijing and Shenzhen seems to be proving to be a good relationship.

However, they have a kind of secret game and competition, are competing for whether you represent China's technology or I represent China's technology, and in the end who is "China's Silicon Valley." Beijing's attitude towards Shenzhen is necessary, but there seems to be a kind of disdain, attitude is inevitable some arrogant, and the feedback of Shenzhen is not so enthusiastic, this from Beijing and Shenzhen between the practitioners of the number of exchanges can also feel this.

The former will think that the latter will only do things even the story will not speak, the latter think that the former do not do things to talk about concepts, but they also expect to have a story, but also the desire for a certain value of identity, so "Shenzhen also has the ideal" this statement will resonate among them and quickly spread, Once he posted on the bow will not tell the story no ideal without feelings of the label, in fact, they are not happy, although the ideal feelings have been used rotten.

And the relationship between Shenzhen and Silicon Valley also takes on each other. On this side, the government media often described Shenzhen as "the global creators of the capital", "The hardware entrepreneur's paradise", in addition to the need for Silicon Valley replenishment of the PR and design, Shenzhen also needs is Silicon Valley, a long time in the technology industry to create a global label, to help get rid of the fixed

However, this is not only the complementarity of the value of resources, but also the combination of two cultures. Both are cities built by "outsiders", with an unusually inclusive culture, which welcomes the emergence of fresh values and does not care much about tradition. There is also more respect or mutual recognition between the two entrepreneurs, from the Industrial Design Roundtable Forum on the local entrepreneurs that the respect and sincere praise, but the passion was affirmed and eagerly responded, both "Love hot."

So you can see that in all the official and unofficial events and meetings on "Hardware Heaven", Silicon Valley and Shenzhen are always the protagonists--only less Beijing.