When inspecting Dalian Hi-tech Zone in August 2013, General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed that Dalian High-tech Zone is not only an aggregation of technology, but also an innovation incubator. If you want to figure out whether a High-tech zone is competitive and has development potential, the key lies in its “high” and “new”. In recent years, Dalian Hi-tech Zone thoroughly implemented the spirit of the important speech of General Secretary Xi Jinping, took the construction of talent management reform pilot area as a guide, talents working mechanism and policy innovation as a breakthrough, closely linked to two major themes of "innovation" and "entrepreneurship", vigorously implemented the talent strategy, attached importance to talents, made preferential policies to attract talents, gathered talents through recruitment platform, set up training system to rear talents, supported talents via startup carrier, retained talents by developing environment, and provided competitive talents and intellectual support for technology innovation and industrial development.
At present, there are 160 thousand software talents, 24 national “thousands of people plan” experts, and 166 Liaoning Province "Shibaiqian Project” talents, Dalian “Haichuang Project” talents and other various high-end talents in the zone. Dalian High-tech Zone has become an innovation and startup base for overseas high-level talents, and also was identified as Liaoning Province Special Pilot Unit for Talents and Dalian Talent Management Reform Experimental Area. By the end of 2014, the zone has 8865 applications for invention patents and 2230 effective invention patents, has undertook over 300 programs, such as National Support Plan, Torch Plan, Key New Products Plan and National Technical Innovation Fund Projects. The high-tech product output value has accounted for 80% of the total, and the strength and level of independent innovation are among the forefront of the national high tech zones. The third industry focusing on software and information technology services accounted for 90% of GDP. It was the first hundred-billion software industry cluster built in China.
First, adhere to talent-driven development concept; firmly establish development layout of talent priority
Talent is the first resource of industrial development. High-tech Zone always put talents as a basis of development and source of innovation, adhered to talent-driven development, accelerated the adjustment of industrial structure through the adjustment of talent structure, took the lead in setting up the development layout that gave priority to talent development planning, pushing talent work, and protecting talent capital, and tried talent management reform beforehand.
-- Adhere to the manner that top leaders attend to talent work personally. The zone established the leading group for talent work led by the secretary of Party Working Committee and director of Management Committee, to strengthen organizational leadership and planning and coordination of the whole zone’s talent work. The top leaders of Party Working Committee and Management Committee took the lead in studying talent policy documents, personally investigated the key enterprises in the zone, and regularly discussed and solved talent development issues with the relevant organizations, such as Human Resources and Social Security Department, start-up, science and technology and finance.
-- Enhance the implementation of talent work guidance. The zone strengthened the planning and top-level design for talent work, formulated and issued "Dalian High-tech Zone Talent Training and Development in Mid-and-long Term Planning (2010 - 2020)", established a discussion system of major human resources, carried out the talent leading group work promotion meeting, improved the supervision and guidance of the work, and continued to reinforce talent fund. In recent years, the funds for talents’ introduction, cultivation, application and reservation in the zone have reached to 1 billion Yuan or more.
---- Improve talent work pattern. In order to form the talent work pattern of “government guidance, enterprise as the main body, and public participation”, the zone signed strategic cooperation agreements with Dalian University of Technology, Dalian Maritime University and Dalian Neusoft Institute of information and established a communication mechanism with key enterprises, Software Association, training organizations and intermediary organ, and jointly study and resolve major human resource issues by regularly carrying out investigation and discussion exchange activities.
Second, implement personnel policy innovation; focus on building talent policy depression effectPractice has proved that the policy is the primary environment for talent development. Where the policy is optimal and the environment is good, where it will form the depression effect. In recent years, high-tech zones moved round enterprises’ demand to overseas high-level talents and software talents, actively promoted the innovation of talent policy, and formed the competition advantages of talent policy, effectively solving the problems of restriction on talent’s introduction, cultivation and reservation for enterprises. At present, Hghi-tech Zone has built a relatively perfect policy system, of which "Haichuang Project" policy and senior software talents incentive policyhave a high profile at home.
----In term of talent introduction. Enterprises who implement "Haichuang Project" policy will get a 100 square meters office space, three-year rent free of 100 square meters apartment for cutting-edge talents, standard subsidies for 1000 square meters workshop, 500-2000 thousand Yuan of special start-up funds according to the situation, less than 1 million Yuan loan with discounted interest, and not less than 1 million Yuan of venture capital and financial guarantees. The zone implemented policies of software talent relocation subsidies, special post allowance for college students, and national, provincial and municipal introduced intelligence project, to guide enterprises to introduce software talents outside the city, outstanding university students and foreign experts. Through five consecutive years of implementation of "Haichuang Project" policy, the zone has provided more than 66 million Yuan of support funds for 58 overseas cutting-edge talents in total, attracted venture capital of 45 million Yuan, and gained 4 million Yuan of country’s support.
---- In term of talent training. The policy of postdoctoral centre construction subsidy encourages enterprises to establish postdoctoral centre and cultivate post-doctoral resource which is urgently needed by project innovation and product R&D. The software talents training subsidy policy encourages enterprises to carry out foreign language and technical training for the high and middle grade software professionals. The IT training camp subsidy policy encourages training institutions and qualified business training centers to train fresh software major graduates for the zone’s enterprises. The PMP certification training encourages employees to improve their project management capabilities. In recent years, the zone has invested nearly 40 million Yuan of funds for training, and 240 companies and training institutions as well as 457 talents got training funds. The zone now owns 14 postdoctoral centers cultivating 50 post doctors.
---- In term of talent motivation. The policy of software senior talents reward offers no more than 150 thousand Yuan for high-level talents in software enterprises. The “Funding Method of Encouraging Intellectual Property Creation and Development” financially supports the innovative talents in invention patents, design patents right and copyright. Since the implementation of the high-level software talents incentive policies, the zone has expended 360 million Yuan in total, 38 thousand people were rewarded, which were well received by enterprises and talents, also became a brand of high-tech talents policy.
Third, broaden the channels for the introduction of talent; gather urgent-needed talents fitting for software industry development
In recent years, with the rapid development of software industry in high-tech zone, the shortage of high-level talents and badly needed professionals has become a bottleneck restricting the development of enterprises. In order to meet the needs of enterprise development, High-tech Zone built a platform for the enterprise’s talent introduction, fully mobilizing the enthusiasm of the introduction and employment of talents for enterprises and reaching a high degree of talent aggregation. Currently, High-tech Zone has become the biggest high-level-talent magnet in Dalian, and its degree of aggregation in software and service outsourcing talents are in the forefront of the nationwide hi-tech zones.
----Carry out "Haichuang week" activity. Since 2000, the zone has successfully held fifteen Haichuang Week activities, which gave a strong impetus to the talent introduction, projects matching and capital connection. Haichuang Week has become a national-level talent introduction platform. According to incomplete statistics, Haichuang Week has attracted nearly 20 thousand overseas students and over 2600 foreign customers; talked over with 27 thousand enterprises, colleges and universities and research institutes; 8900 overseas students returned home and obtained employment; 4500 overseas students returned home and started a business, all of which achieved remarkable economic and social benefits. At the moment, the zone has more than 9700 overseas talents, 900 science-and-technology enterprises or more founded by overseas talents, taking up 50% of overall high-tech enterprises in the zone. One third of bio pharmaceutical companies and 30% of advanced equipment manufacturing industry enterprises were founded by returnees. More than half of the patents and software copyrights in the zone are the scientific achievements brought back by overseas talents.
----Organize "Overseas Talents Fair". At the same time of promoting the talent strategy of “invitation”, the zone also carried out the talent strategy of “going out”. The zone had organized over 300 enterprises to go to Tokyo Japan, Sydney Australia and Ottawa Canada to hold overseas high-level talents fair which received good results. Through the overseas talents fair, a total of 1500 overseas students and more than 600 foreign experts successfully achieved docking with enterprises.
----Carry out the "Enterprises Walk Into Campus" activity. The zone annually organized science-and-technology enterprises in field of software and information services, e-commerce, animation games, Internet, etc. to go to key universities and colleges in northeast and northwest and colleges and universities in Dalian to carry out recruitment activities. In the last few years, Hi-tech Zone introduced over 6000 college graduates every year. For now, there are nearly 10 thousand graduates at Neusoft and IBM, over 5 thousand graduates at Genpact, Accenture, HP and Hi-Think.
Fourth, establish the "big training" system; improve the innovation ability in an all round way
Innovation driven is essentially the talent driven. Focusing on the requirement to talent quality and innovation ability by industrial transformation and upgrading, Dalian Hi-tech Zone built a “Four in One” training system jointly impelled by the government, enterprises, academies and training institutions, which efficiently enhanced the personnel quality and innovation ability. At present, the training industry has begun to take shape, the entrant training rate of software enterprises reached 100% every year, and the training rate of other serving staff reached 75%.
----Promote the talent training cooperation between the zone and colleges. In order to make full use of the education resources, Dalian Hi-tech Zone signed cooperation framework agreements with Dalian University of Technology, Dalian Maritime University, Dalian Neusoft Institute of Information and other institutions, and established the talent training and cooperative relations with more than 20 colleges both inside and outside the city. Currently, Neusoft Institute of Information, the country's largest software talent institute, has 14 thousand undergraduates. The zone pushed 22 colleges and universities in Dalian to open IT-related major and encouraged Software School of Dalian University of Technology, Software School of Dalian University of Foreign Languages, Software School of Dalian Jiaotong University and Dalian Software Vocational University to rear double-degree compound-type software talents. Every year, five software colleges inside the city transported thousand talents to enterprises in High-tech zone.
----Support colleges to carry out training project cooperation with enterprises. Through convening the talents training seminars, annual human resources meeting and other activities, the zone guided enterprises to conduct talents training cooperation with colleges and universities inside and outside the city. “Dalian University of Technology, IBM Smart City and Big Data Processing United Lab”, jointly founded by Dalian University of Technology and IBM, created a new model of cooperation between school and enterprise. The customized training of foreign language talents which was carried out jointly by Citicorp software and Dalian Foreign Language University basically met the needs of the enterprise to financial talents. The zone’s enterprises, including New Vision, XYZ Digtal Studio, Mine Loader, Spike Software and Red Fox Animation, cooperated with colleges and universities inside and outside the city to establish more than 30 practice and training bases, training more than 6000 talents.
---- Introduce and support well-known IT talent training institutions. The zone has provided domestic and foreign well-known training institutions with computers and other teaching facilities free of charge, and provided support in rent and the use of the training room. In recent years, the zone has invested 180 million Yuan in teaching facilities for training institutions, 120 million Yuan in location rental, and 2 billion Yuan in talent public service construction. Eight renowned training institutions, such as Neusoft, Hi-Think and CS&S, trained more than 1 thousand person each year.
----Carry out government public training. In order to meet the demand of public training projects including business English, Java, .Net and enterprise human resources management to software talents, the zone carried out a public training which the training provider was designated by the government and the government provided 50-70% of the training funds. Since the implementation of the government public training, the training projects in field of management, foreign language and technology amounted to 500 or more, 18 thousand enterprise employees got trained, the cost of enterprise talent training was greatly reduced, gaining praise by enterprises and trainees.
Fifth, create talent innovation and entrepreneurship platform; release energy of talent innovation and Entrepreneurship"Introduce one-man start-up, drive an industry, and gather a group of talents". In recent years, Hi-tech Zone earnestly carried out the report spirit of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China on the market to determine the resources allocation, actively implemented the work requirements of the State Council’s “public startup, wide innovation”, adhered to market-oriented perspective to plan and promote innovation and start-up, mobilized enterprises and social capitals to participate in incubation chain construction, and stimulated the vitality of talent innovation and start-up. Founded by Ming Pingwen, a doctor of Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Sunrise Power now owns nearly 400 fuel-cell-related patents. The company has become a leading enterprise in the domestic fuel cell industry. The project of “shore-, ship- and air-basis sea oil slick detection sensor recognition technology and its application”, hosted by Liu Yu from Dalian Huanxin Technology, won the State Technological Invention Award; The technology of the Vanadium Redox Flow Battery developed by Rongke Energy Storage researchers achieved all independent intellectual property rights, ranking the world’s leading level.
-----Introduce social capital to carry out innovation and entrepreneurship incubation. Under the support of the management committee of High-tech Zone policy, Start-up Workshop, with Dalian Start-up Workshop Technology Service Co., Ltd. as main cooperation management, was established in 2012. For the past two years, Start-up Workshop has owned 2000sq meters of incubator and exchange sites, and has held more than 1000 entrepreneurial activities, basically being held by the day. Start-up Workshop has served 23000 entrepreneurs and incubated 48 enterprises, attracting nearly 200 million Yuan of social angel investment and venture capital investment. Start-up Workshop has been rated as state-level enterprise incubator, becoming the first brand of start-up in the northeast China. Move over, in 2013, the Administrative Committee of Dalian High-tech Zone cooperated with Neusoft to launch the country’s first College Students Creative Industrial Park -- a Neusoft students creative industrial park project, with an investment of 1.8 billion Yuan, an area of 85 thousand square meters, which had supported 200 pioneering enterprises in five years.
----Construct multi-agent talents Innovation and entrepreneurship carrier. In order to optimize and enhance the level of pioneering incubation service, the management committee of Hi-tech Zone invested, constructed and operated Dalian Overseas Scholars Business Incubator which had an incubation area of over 200 thousand square meters and 250 overseas scholar incubating enterprises, incubated 1200 enterprises or more, and had output value reaching 10 billion Yuan. It is the most concentrated area of overseas students businesses and an important carrier of innovation and entrepreneurship in the city. It was identified as "National Hi-tech Innovation Service Center", “Demonstration Construction Pilot Base of National Overseas Students Business Park” and “First Batch of National Science and Technology Incubator Demonstration Unit”. With the help of institutions and enterprise resources, the zone has built the innovation and entrepreneurship platform. Currently, the zone has established 16 specialized parks serving for enterprises’ innovation, including Science Park of Qixianling National University, National Technology Transfer Centre of Dalian University of Technology, Dalian Maritime University Science and Technology Innovation Park, had 16 various of public technical service platforms, 122 R&D centers, 6 cloud computing and big data centers, and had 11 types of incubators inclusive of 5 national incubators, the total incubating area covering more than 300 thousand square meters, ranking the first in the northeast China.
-----Start talent business demonstration project. According to the spirit of “Mass-oriented Start-up Space” constructed by the State Council, the zone has formulated supportive documents, such as the Implementation Opinions On Promoting the Project of ‘Start-up in Dalian, Hi-tech Zone Exemplary Demonstration’ and Some Opinions On Promoting the Project of ‘Start-up in Dalian, Hi-tech Zone Exemplary Demonstration’. Through the implementation of six major projects including innovative incubator cultivation, talents agglomeration at home and abroad, commercialization of research findings, science and technology financial boost, entrepreneur services promotion and entrepreneurial culture demonstration, the zone issued twelve policies to encourage start-up, created “public start-up space” and other a series of measures, in the hope to increase 20 incubators, 1000 high-tech pioneering enterprises and 20000 entrepreneurs, reach 1 million square meters of overall incubation space, and make start-up waves on a city wide in future three to five years. At present, the core area of “public start-up space” covering an area of 25 thousand square meters has been put into use.
Sixth, focus on the job, learning and living needs of talents; create a talent development environment reaching “high and new” level.
In recent years, Dalian Hi-tech Zone had its eyes on talent’s needs on job, learning and living, constantly improved the level of service, improved the living environment of talents, and created a good environment for the development of talents. Dalian Hi-tech Zone has become an innovational and enterprising talents aggregation and a livable and enterprise-adaptable highland. CCTV and other 32 provincial and city-level mainstream media publicized and reported the method of creating talent development environment adopted by Hi-tech Zone, arousing strong social response.
-----Create an innovative and start-up environment. The zone has established Liaoning Province’s first "No Administrative Fees Zone" and country’s only "Customs Software Free Trade Center", reducing the cost of business operations. The zone has built "Dalian Entrepreneurs Club" and organized some activities such as entrepreneurial auditorium, director teahouse and college students start-up trip, providing rental subsidy policy for overseas students and a full range of services for pioneering enterprises. The zone has set a sci-tech credit risk compensation fund with credit extension of 4 billion Yuan, attracted 73 investment and financing institutions and more than 6 billion Yuan of social capitals, and built such platforms to solve science-and-technology enterprises’ financing difficulties as " one network (Science and technology financial services network)", "two bases (Science-and-technology enterprises credit information database and investment and financing resources database"), and "one building (Science and Technology Finance Building)". The zone has organized collective consultation on wages, to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of enterprises.
-----Create service environment for talents. The zone founded electronic journals such as “Dalian High-tech Zone "," High-tech Zone Enterprises " and " High-tech Talents ", created high-tech talents Wechat, QQ group, union service SMS platform and union membership service card, publicized enterprise innovation and entrepreneurship measures, presented talent’s typical deeds, and provided talents with policy advisory services. The zone’s organ established special talent office, allocated special staff for key enterprises and talent service in departments such as investment attraction, start-up and industry, and set college graduates service window at administrative service hall, providing "one-to-one", " nanny-state" and "one-stop" service. The zone integrated social service resources and collaborated with well-know recruiting firms and human resources services companies, including Dalian Software Association, Business Association of Hi-tech Zone, Zhaopin.com inside the zone and ChinaHR.com, offering enterprises with services of talent recruitment, talent training, and standard setting.
-----Create living environment for talents. The zone invested more than 84 million Yuan to help 784 company talents purchase price-capped housing, and provide apartments for more than 1000 talents, effectively solving the housing problem of talents. The zone established a recreational and sports activity center integrating functions of cultural house, library and comprehensive stadium, carried out activities like “Employee Culture & Art Festival”, “Employee Art Show” and “Employee Fun Games”, founded over 5000 Employee Sports and Entertainment Associations and more than 700 animation, innovation, science and other characteristic employee bookstores, all of which enriched talents’ spare time life. The regional transportation got greatly improved: the construction of No.202 light rail extension, hi-tech zone section was completed; 16 talent-customized bus lines were opened; the traffic engineering of metro and southern coastal bridge would have been completed one after another. The zone is preparing for the project of international hospital and international school, to provide first-class hardware facilities and high efficiency and quality service for the business talents and their children. Dalian Hi-tech Wanda Commercial Plaza and Yinggeshi Botanical Garden have started operations. Catering, entertainment, medical care, education and other supporting services facilities matching “new and high level” of High-tech Zone are being improved day by day.