On the afternoon of June 11th, the MBA Education Center of the School of Business was honored to invite the Director, General Manager and Party Secretary of Guangzhou Broadband Backbone Network Co., Ltd. to give lectures on the business opportunities and business development of smart cities. The lecture was chaired by Prof. Yuan Denghua, Vice Dean of the School of Business.

First of all, Zhang Fang introduced the proposal of the concept “Smart City” and that its development has experienced a relatively long and tortuous process. In the further explanation of this concept, he put forward two key factors of “Smart City”: First, the system represented by big data, cloud computing and mobile Internet and that’s what we call information technology of the new generation; Second, urban innovative ecology under the backdrop of knowledge environment.

Then, he introduced the development process and the status quo of “smart city” and stressed the importance of innovative ideas. He thinks that cloud technology and big data provides a steady stream of power for the city’s economic and social development. He said that Guangzhou City is a city put forward the “smart city” concept at a relatively early stage and develops on such a basis. However, he also pointed out that as the forefront of reform and opening up, Guangzhou has been accustomed to the development model of a small government and a large society so the process of constructing a “smart city” is alike that of exploring the path through groping on the stones in the course of crossing the river. At the budding stage of the emerging industry, Guangzhou was lacking in government support and guidance, so that in the past decade, the development of Guangzhou as a “smart city” has been quite slow. He used a Chinese proverb to help us understand the development of Guangzhou as a “smart city”: Though getting up early, it caught a late set.

In addition, he believes that an entrepreneur had better find business opportunities from “smart city” construction and give some thought upon the resulting business development strategies. He argues that entrepreneurs can contact with the government but cannot entirely depend on the government. Specifically, enterprises should actively respond to the government's policies, take the initiative and use their own advantages to work together with more entities in the proactive participation of “smart city” construction, strengthen cooperation between enterprises and government to concertedly promote the development of “smart city”. But he also holds that as an enterprise, it should learn to use the government's impetus instead of being dependent on this impetus. The collapse of many enterprises is because they only use the impetus of government policies but cannot keep up with the pace of the government. For this, Zhang Fang took Alibaba’s success as an example and he believed that Alibaba has a thorough understanding of the government and we can get a glimpse from Alibaba's three main business sectors. The city service sector of Alipay is the urban public services opened by the government market and provided through the cooperation between government and enterprises. By setting the level of public service, Alipay has become the largest mobile platform for the sake and convenience of the public.

In addition, he believes that to seize business opportunities, enterprises should pay special attention to the transformation. He cited Anjubao Company as an example and firmly believed that Anjubao is well specialized in this respect. In the past, the Company only operated some businesses in software of entry and exit fee of parking lots, which was not very successful. However, it actively transformed with the trend of the times and their current systems are all based on a cloud information, which achieves a full interconnectivity between various systems. These information can be used to calculate out which park space is available at which time periods and this can be utilized to take full advantage of the parking space efficiency. He proposed that the construction of “smart city” will form a "catalytic effect" on the transformation and upgrading of the economy and the adjustment of industrial structure, which will accelerate the strategic transformation of the mode of economic development. On one hand, the construction of a “smart city” can help to form a smart and long manufacturing industry chain featuring huge and widespread and give rise to a batch of new smart manufacturing industries. On the other hand, it will promote the smart technology penetration into to the traditional fields, thus pushing forward the transformation and upgrading of traditional manufacturing industry. In addition, we also need to see that as social network and Internet-based mobile network coverage grow in scope, customers lose information of the old business companies, consumers’ voice gradually expands and the bargaining power is strengthened, thus creating business opportunities for enterprises and for entrepreneurs as well.

For the strategic thinking of enterprise development, Zhang Fang proposed that “smart city” is an opportunity that cannot to be missed, but it is also a serious challenge for traditional industries in that the traditional industry should weather storms in the turbulent tide and it must go through the strategic transformation. For enterprises, companies should work with governments, communities and partners to explore a variety of ways to innovate and break through industry bottlenecks.

At the end of the lecture, he concluded: the development of enterprises should comply with the general trend of a country to vigorously promote the “smart city” construction and give full play to their own technological and innovative advantages. They have to be based on reality, seek mutual cooperation between government institutions and enterprises, thus working together to gain win-win profits and jointly create a “smart city”.

Finally the lecture entered the free Q&A session and the atmosphere was so warm that the students actively aired their view and Zhang Fang patiently answered the questions proposed one by one.