By Ma Jun & Wang Xiaoming, Research Team on “Invigorating Vitality of Innovation Entities”, Enterprise Research Institute, DRC

Research Report No.166, 2016 (Total 5049) 2016-12-8

Abstract: With the development of smart products, sensors, processors, memory, communication components and smart modules of related software will be built in more and more manufactured products. Internet of things and artificial smart technology are applied so that products will have functions including the perception of environmental change, automatic decision-making, and self-learning. Smart technology will draw the characteristics of the traditional manufacturing industry closer to those of the information industry, showing to a certain extent the characteristics of economies of significant scale and strong network effects. Smart technology will exert a far-reaching impact on enterprises including the following aspects. Products will switch from relying mainly on hardware to equal emphasis on both hardware and software, the enterprise-customer relationship will change from one-time transactions into long-term services, big data will become a vital resource for enterprises, and the competition between enterprises will evolve into the competition of industrial ecology. Intelligent revolution provides an enormous opportunity to the transformation and upgrading of Chinese enterprises. The following measures need to be taken as an active response. First, we need to advance the transformation of human resources structure. Second, we need to speed up the construction of information infrastructure. Third, we need to continue to support the development of China’s chip industry and core software. Fourth, we need to enhance the supervision over information security. And fifth, we need to improve the technical standards, laws and regulations related to the use of smart products.

Key words: smart technology, enterprise innovation, transformation and upgrading