Currently in China, an emerging trend of mass entrepreneurship and innovation with a large number of participants, various patterns and huge potential is bringing new ideas and enlightenment.

Mass entrepreneurship and innovation can stimulate social development. Science and technology development, such as mobile internet, big data, cloud computing and intelligent manufacturing, greatly changed the combination pattern of laborers, production and the subject of labor.

With the help of the internet, entrepreneurship and innovation are not accessible only to a small number of people. Among those participating in career development, there are returned overseas students, scientific staff, university students, farmers, ex-servicemen, housewives, the unemployed and the disabled.

Mass entrepreneurship and innovation reflects the change of the innovation pattern of modern technologies. With the development of the internet and big data, instant communication and mass data can be found everywhere. The traditional closed type of innovation based on hierarchical organization structures will be replaced by an open type of innovation with virtual organization structures.

Not only can some enterprises, scientific institutions and specialized technological staff innovate, but every ordinary person can play an important role in developing new products and new technologies and provide solutions.

Mass entrepreneurship and innovation are the key solutions to creating a new driving power and improving quality and efficiency. The Chinese economy has entered the phase of the “new normal”, so the key to development is supply-side structural reform.

Mass entrepreneurship and innovation is a process that labor, capital and technologies keep optimizing. It also reflects the deep integration of industrialization and informatization, and the development trend of economic services.

The number of university students and higher vocational school students has passed 35 million. There are seven million university graduates annually. This provides a great store of knowledge and innovation power.

In the past few years, crowd funding, crowd sourcing, mass entrepreneurship and collective support became the labels of entrepreneurship and innovation in the new era. New patterns and highlights, such as Innovation Factory and MakerSpace town, constantly emerged.

To achieve mass entrepreneurship and innovation needs the support from the system, organizations, environment and culture. It also needs the joint power of government, market and society.

Mass entrepreneurship and innovation promotes the self-reform of the government. It remolded relations among the government, market and society. Since 2015, related documents published by the government reached over 20, which primarily formed the support system for entrepreneurship and innovation in the country.

According to the annual report of global entrepreneurship released by Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, China listed third in the ranking of “government policy’s influence on entrepreneurship”.

(The article’s authors, Zhang Xiaoqiang and Xu Zhanchen, are from the China Center for International Economic Exchanges)