Why did many of our high-tech achievements “fall” in the last mile? Qian Xuhong, president of the East China Normal University and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said one of the crucial reasons is that we have a shortage of qualified CTOs.
The 23rd Annual Meeting of China Association for Science and Technology China Science and Technology Summit
On July 27, the 23rd Annual Meeting of China Association for Science and Technology China Science and Technology Summit - 2021 China Science and Technology Think Tank Forum was held in Beijing. Qian Xuhong stressed in his keynote speech the importance of chief technology officer (CTO), and put forward suggestions for exploring and cultivating leading talents of high-tech transformation and industrialization with Chinese characteristics that can be promoted and replicated.
It is sorted according to the content of the speech, with abridgments.
Training Chief Technology Officers (CTO) to serve the transformation of high-tech achievements
Speech at the China Science and Technology Think Tank Forum 2021
Qian Xuhong
President of the East China Normal University and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering
on July 27, 2021
As the bearer of science and Technology, the facilitator of changing the industry outlook, and the talent of transforming scientific and technological achievements, the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) should be highly valued by the society and the country.
The previous trade war between China and the US exposed our long-term problems. One important reason why we were clutched at the throat and many of our high-tech achievements failed in the last mile of transformation is that we lack qualified CTOs.
1. CTO arises in response to the demand of transformation of scientific and technological achievements
The earliest form of CTO was very similar to the chief scientist tasked with a national strategy. For example, in 1942, the United States set up chief scientists to study the Manhattan Project and the Apollo Project, with its huge investment and a large number of managers, including thousands of top scientists. China also had such chief scientists, such as Qian Xuesen and Zhu Guangya.
In the true sense, CTO began in 1980. It first appeared in the US research and development companies and the main work was to turn scientific and technological achievements into profitable products. By 1990, CTO had become an important figure in major computer and software companies, named CIO (Chief Information Officer) by some companies. Around 2000, these high-tech enterprises all had general technical directors, who had become the soul of the whole industry and were very good at the technical decomposition and integration of internal and external technical resources of companies. In 2009, the United States set up the national-level CTO, hoping to promote national progress with the mode of chief technology officer at the level of national governance.
Due to market-oriented reasons, almost all transnational enterprises and high-tech enterprises have CTOs. For example, multinational companies such as SONY, Canon and Total have R&D presidents; Huawei, Google, Microsoft and other high-tech enterprises have CTOs/CIOs; high-tech companies such as Petrochina and Boeing have CTOs/R&D presidents.
2. What is a CTO?
Since the CTO is so important, what is the function of the position? The first is innovation. This is the primary quality and basic quality that a CTO must possess. From the perspective of a CTO growth training and commonness, we can realize that innovative personality is very important for the CTO, and it is impossible to become a real CTO without innovative personality. This innovative personality can be summed up in four words: critical thinking, challenging authority, taking risks and independent experience. The innovation level of a CTO determines the competitiveness of an industry.
The second is good at resource allocation and technological innovation. CTO has the characteristics of a scientist, and the background in business management, as well as the ability to translate humanity culture and science technology, capable of translating the economic decisions of the board of directors into technical language and translating the needs of the country and industry and even political requirements into technical language.
Finally, they are good at decomposition and integration. They break down the ideas pursued for specific industrial technical problems into several academic single problems and distribute them to the most suitable researchers all over the world. They also combine the solutions of various professions and transform them into overall solutions. For example, when a CTO translates a question into technical language, they analyze which disciplines the question involves and delegate each question and idea into different projects through information search, evaluation, international conferences and recommendations from others. When all the work is completed, it will be assembled and integrated in the team led by CTO, and finally become a result and a prototype, which can be industrialized through the test of practice. In this way, external contractors can only get access to a certain part of the work, and the entire assembly process is known only by the CTO team and unknown to the outside world. Therefore, it is difficult to leak technical information. Even if leaked, it is only a certain part, not affecting the overall function. A strong CTO team does not need to be large, and the core is effectiveness, not to pursue large and comprehensive, but to pursue unique and more effective.
In general, as a technology leader, a CTO's responsibilities include planning, leadership and execution. It is a combination of the responsibilities of the company's chief engineer, marketing personnel and technology development management personnel.
3. Differences between CTO and general engineer and technical broker
So what’s the difference between a CTO and a chief engineer? The chief engineers focus exclusively on things at the intersection of workshop sections. Although they also pay attention to holistic, strategic, and systemic issues, they seldom care about future and industrial research and development. The important difference between CTO and chief engineer is that CTO usually has a background of research and development, with a very deep understanding of research and development, very familiar with the market and very good at management. Therefore, CTO, in a strict sense, refers to the integration of chief engineer, president of research and development, marketing manager, leader and manager.
There is a difference between CTO and technology broker. In the past, we placed the hope of technology transformation on brokers. In fact, they did play a great role in the common and low-threshold technology transformation and industrial connection, but in the highly specialized, high-threshold and high-tech industrial connection, technology brokers are almost useless. This is because a CTO with profound technical background and broad knowledge is needed at this time. In the past, technical brokers understood the market and trade, but they lacked unique understanding and mastery of technology. CTOs, on the other hand, come from research and development and have organizational skills and industry vision, so they have a better understanding of what is new and cutting-edge than technology brokers.
For example, Steve Jobs of Apple is a person with comprehensive ability, and he has a strong ability of decomposition and integration. A considerable part of the units and patterns are decomposed to others.
A typical example in China is Jiangzhong Pharmaceutical, which specializes in the manufacture of traditional Chinese medicine. They are very good at breaking down industrial development issues into different biological, chemical and mechanical issues and outsourcing them to the outside world. After completion, they will carry out integration and assembly.
4. Why does China lack CTOs?
In the new era, the cycle between basic science and technology, engineering and market is constantly accelerating. The state that scientists were completely separated from engineers, artists, and even from technical and industrial managers in the past has been not that serious, and the two sides are gradually merging. So we need to train people who have comprehensive abilities A CTO is not a person, but a class, and a large reserve army that can grow into a CTO.
And that's the class that we lack most. Why did it happen? This is because CTOs in developed countries have grown up naturally through random trial and constant iteration in the hundreds of years of industrialization to meet social needs. After decades of rapid development, China cannot wait for the CTOs to grow naturally.
There are two types of natural growth of CTOs in developed countries. First, for the start-up model, through the process of financing, development and refinancing, technology-oriented leaders slowly grow up at the beginning of the establishment of a start-up company, most of them are eliminated and a few survive. Second, the technical personnel in the multinational enterprise become the director of the technical team and then become the regional technical director through management training and cultivation and finally turn to the CTO of the entire multinational company.
Our country cannot copy the system of cultivating CTOs, because our development system is too fast and we have to speed up even more when we are stuck by others. However, the current situation of CTO training in China is not optimistic. On the one hand, the cooperation with foreign CTO think tanks is temporarily suspended. On the other hand, the self-organized CTO social platform in China does not have a perfect curriculum system, basically focused on non-degree training and education.
5. Training model of industrial technology leaders with Chinese characteristics
What we need to think about now is how to establish a new training and education process and system to realize the accelerated growth of CTOs in China. The East China Normal University founded the Shanghai International School of Chief Technology Officer, which aims to promote the transformation of scientific and technological achievements through the transformation of talents. To be specific, we should strengthen international cooperation, learn from foreign experience, and accelerate growth. Besides, we should give priority to cooperate with Shanghai superior units to improve the professional level of the whole CTO preparation team.
The East China Normal University has very strong comprehensive advantages. We attach great importance to the five fields of “Education +, Ecological +, Intelligent +, international + and Health +,” and train “T-shaped” talents, guiding them to be good at thinking, have leading height and unique technology, care about value innovation and adhere to the long-term principle and the world standard.
In the whole training system, we focus on four types of courses: thinking logic, executive ability, commercialization of technology, and commercialization methods and then add different courses and training according to different fields, such as AI, IT and new engineering fields.
In the past, we laid great emphasis on the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, believing that industrialization could be carried out after the transformation, but we did not realize that talents and achievements were bound to some extent. Therefore, we should cultivate talents with excellent vision for technological innovation, knowledge of global markets and organizational leadership, train a CTO team with high competence and international vision, explore the formation of a set of industrial technology leaders training model with Chinese characteristics that can be promoted and replicated, and accelerate the industrialization process of high and new technology in our country through the training of technical leaders, so as to solve the “last kilometer” problem of achievement transformation.