The post-crisis world economy has been in weak growth, the reason for which is thought to be the stagnation of technological development. It is believed that the stumbling block in technological innovation sneaks into the economy and consequently holds it back.

Joseph Schumpeter notes in his work The Theory of Economic Development that innovation—a commercial or industrial application of new products, technologies, methods, resources or forms—is the main fuel for economic development. Innovation is a reform inside the economic structure so as to destroy the old economic structure and create a new one.

1. Forecast: Embryo of a New Technology Revolution

In 2016, Emerging Science and Technology Trends: 2016-2045, a long report submitted to the US army, caught worldwide attention. The report identified 20 most noteworthy scientific and technical development trends after a comprehensive comparison and analysis of almost 700 scientific and technical trends.

2. Layout: meet the challenge of new technology

Faced with the impact of a new round of technology revolution, countries including China, America, Germany, and Japan are taking the initiative to meet the challenges by upgrading their manufacturing industries.

While the manufacturing industry is experiencing transformation and upgrading, technologies such as Gene-tech, new energy and digital information are overturning the industrial layout. With the rapid development of genomics and some other relevant technologies, the rapid promotion of precision medicine and biosynthesis, the changes in the present international energy resource map, and the formation of a “trinity” of big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence, humanity is entering a new era of information- and intelligence-based services.

In March this year, flagship innovative enterprises including Apple Inc., Tesla Motors, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, Monsanto, China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation, China Electronic Technology Corporation, IBM, Inspur, etc., will appear at the China Development Forum and share their insights into future economy.

3. Focus: China Development Forum and Innovation

For China Development Forum, “Industrial innovation and technological innovation” has always been a hot topic, and a spirited dialogue on this subject was carried out between Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Ma in 2016.

Mark Zuckerberg argues that innovation is about solving problems that may appear in the 5 to 10 years to come rather than merely solving the current problems. The promotion of Internet, artificial intelligence and virtual reality-based computing platforms is his three major concerns.

Speaking of the past of technology revolutions, Jack Ma believes that we are now undergoing the 3rd technology revolution after the previous two. During the past two revolutions, people paid more attention to their cognition of the external world than to the exploration of themselves. Significant breakthroughs will be made in human body science in the next 30 to 40 years, he says.

Forty-eight enterprises from electronics, Hi-tech, ocean shipping, automobile, rail transit, finance, and healthcare industries where innovation is active, attended “China Development Forum 2016—Innovation Frontier Exhibition”. Lots of latest technologies and service concepts were introduced at the forum. Smart interaction and personal experiencing brought participants into the details of these companies’ innovative production and services.

Technology revolution and industry revolution will again become one of the hottest issues in the upcoming China Development Forum 2017.

The forum will be divided into 2 parts and over 10 distinguished guests from home and abroad will be invited to talk about the relation between technology revolution and industry revolution and give their advice on how to drag the world economy out of the mire. These guests include Martin Lundstedt, president and CEO of Volvo, Alex Gorsky, chairman and CEO of Johnson & Johnson, Gao Hongwei, chairman of China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation, Shen Nanpeng, global executive partner of Sequoia Capital, Klaus Engel, chairman and CEO of Evonik Industries, Joe Macneil, global president of Tesla Motors, and Yang Yuanqing, chairman of Lenovo.