On February 17, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized at a private enterprise symposium that "it is timely for private enterprises and private entrepreneurs to show their skills" and proposed that "it is hoped that private enterprises and private entrepreneurs will serve the country with ambition, be committed to development, be law-abiding and good at operating, and promote prosperity first and promote common prosperity, so as to make new and greater contributions to promoting Chinese-style modernization." This important speech not only pointed out the development prospects for private enterprises, demonstrated the Party Central Committee’s earnest expectations for private enterprises, but also affirmed the important role of private enterprises in promoting high-quality economic development. Facing the vast spring breeze, private enterprises are taking innovation as their engine to inject strong momentum into high-level technological self-reliance and self-improvement.

Overall, my country's private enterprises have become one of the main forces of original innovation and disruptive innovation. Whether it is to achieve a technological breakthrough "from 0 to 1", conquering disruptive technologies, or promoting the reconstruction and upgrading of the industrial ecosystem, private enterprises have always been at the forefront, contributing about 70% of the innovative achievements. For example, private communication technology enterprises have achieved strategic breakthroughs in communication technology and computing power technology; Hangzhou's "Six Little Dragons" have averaged less than 10 years old, so they rewritten the technological development trajectory of their industries with their strong innovation capabilities, confirming the evolutionary law of private enterprises from following to leading. It can be said that private entrepreneurs and private enterprises are constantly contributing more to promoting scientific and technological innovation, cultivating new quality productivity, and building a modern industrial system. Behind the leapfrog development of private enterprises in science and technology, there is a strong team of technology-based entrepreneurs, internal-driven enterprises’ scientific and technological innovation capabilities, and a relaxed and inclusive science and technology innovation ecosystem. Among them, science and technology entrepreneurs internalize the scientific and technological innovation capabilities of market entities through innovative combinations of production factors, relying on a relaxed and inclusive scientific and technological innovation ecosystem to achieve the coupling between entrepreneurs, enterprise organizations and innovation ecosystems, and stimulate the innovation motivation, vitality and capabilities of enterprises.

In private enterprises, an entrepreneurial team with an innovative mission and enthusiasm for serving the country is the core force in achieving technological breakthroughs. All the entrepreneurs who participated in this symposium regard technological innovation as the core competitiveness of the enterprise. They may have insisted on investing in science and technology for decades, or have long received cutting-edge technology learning, or have made great efforts to introduce high-quality scientific and technological innovation talents, which fully reflects the entrepreneur's human capital characteristics. In summary, technology-based entrepreneurs are human capital that combines knowledge and skills, innovation awareness and scientific and technological activities as their characteristics, and constitute the core production factor of the enterprise. Because of this, technology-based entrepreneurs have unique technological insight, risk-bearing and market innovation, and can play a leading role in private enterprises. An undeniable fact is: the more developed the private economy, the more sound science and technology entrepreneurship education will be, the stronger the team of science and technology entrepreneurs will be, and the more technological innovation in the region will be at the forefront.

With a strong team of technology entrepreneurs, we also need the technological innovation capabilities of internal drive enterprises. In the digital economy era, the new generation of artificial intelligence and future industrial development face the fierce global competition and high-risk challenges, which inevitably requires strong internal innovation momentum. The reason why private enterprises have become trendsetters and leaders in the digital economy is because they have completed the leap from tool innovation to paradigm reconstruction and reconstructed the independent innovation capability system. For example, my country's machinery manufacturers took the lead in building a "terminal + cloud" industrial big data soft and hard platform, exploring a development path of Industry 4.0; "Black Myth: Wukong" created a new milestone in domestic games and created a new paradigm for the deep integration of cultural symbols and hard-core technology. This evolutionary logic from points to surfaces not only includes deep breakthroughs in core technologies, but also reflects the advanced layout at the strategic level. Private enterprises in my country are gradually participating in and changing the new pattern of global technological competition in a similar spiral upward path. Some leading private enterprises have played the main role in the industrial chain, built a new ecosystem of "four-chain integration" of innovation chain, capital chain, supply chain, and talent chain, and created digital platforms such as digital twins and industrial Internet to drive other enterprises to deeply participate in the formulation of international standards, providing a Chinese solution for the development of the global digital economy.

The cluster emergence of innovative achievements cannot be separated from an inclusive and relaxed innovation ecosystem and a first-class business environment. The deep coupling between market mechanism and innovation ecology is the environmental guarantee for private enterprises to capture the window period of technology iteration, prompting them to continuously break through boundaries in the virtuous cycle of "demand drives innovation, innovation creates market". Zhejiang encourages private entrepreneurs to participate in the formulation of enterprise-related policies and opens up many green channels for the long-term development of enterprises. These practices reflect the governance wisdom of synergistic efforts between an effective market and an effective government. In such a collaborative governance framework, the government and the market establish a consensus and create a relaxed, inclusive and effective governance innovation environment through cooperation and interaction. In the future, we must further improve the "tolerant failure" scientific and technological risk sharing mechanism, establish a larger-scale innovation parent fund composed of multiple investment entities, and provide long-term capital support for enterprises; implement digital reforms such as "data access" and "cloud review", and gradually improve administrative approval efficiency; establish a boundary awareness of "not being unable to call" and a service awareness of "on call" to promote government service providers from managers to escorts.

In the great journey of Chinese-style modernization, private enterprises are both witnesses and builders. We must always adhere to the "two unshakable" situation, further deepen reform and opening up in an all-round way, ignite the spark of innovation for private enterprises, and let the fire of innovation for private enterprises form a prairie fire, and write a brilliant chapter for high-quality economic and social development.

Author: Wei Jiang (President of Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics, Chief Expert of Zhejiang Base of China United Front Theory Research Association)