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Xiaolan Fu speaks at Alibaba global SME summit

Professor Xiaolan Fu spoke to more than 3,000 businesspeople from Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) at the inaugural Alibaba global SME summit on China’s path to innovation earlier this month.

Professor Fu spoke about the opportunities and challenges SMEs face in the ‘Fourth industrial revolution’ and amid the trend towards anti-globalisation, and suggested a number of solutions to enable SMEs to make the most of the opportunities and address the challenges.

She encouraged SMEs to find their own unique product and argued that in a distributed and decentralised economic model, small enterprises had an advantage and showed the way forward. She encouraged entrepreneurs to be persistent in their innovation and also to forge collaborations and networks with others in order to achieve greater global impact.

Alibaba is one of the world’s largest online retail companies. The summit took place in Hangzhou, China, on 2 April.

Xiaolan Fu is Professor of Technology and International Development at ODID and Director of the Technology and Management Centre for Development.