Technology paves way to realizing dream

China's embrace of the new opens up possibilities so fantastic that to some it may seem like wishful thinking

Taking a subway in China today is a digital trip. I remember the first time I saw the poster of a Shanghai subway station turned into a "digital" shelf. Simply scan the barcode of an item on the poster, and by the time you get home, the product will be on its way for delivery. And while riding the train, it is hard not to notice most people are leaning into digital screens. They are engrossed in a micro blog, playing a game, or messaging friends. Today more than half of all access to the Internet occurs through mobile devices, and technology has revolutionized the way Chinese interact with the world.

We live in a time of great possibility. The country's rapid adoption of new technologies, unhindered by outdated information technology infrastructure, provides benefits today and for the future. Technology increases China's capacity to achieve the "Chinese dream" invoked by the new government.

At the center of the Chinese dream is the improvement of people's lives. Great innovative ideas tend to be viral, spreading from organization to organization until they span entire industries and then trickle down to benefit all of us. These types of ideas are necessary as China faces similar challenges as the rest of the world, though the nation tackles them on a much larger scale.

New information technologies provide China the opportunity to find new solutions to these problems and choose a path different to that of other nations. In the past, benefits of IT were often related to productivity and efficiency gains. But for China, the most populous nation in the world, efficiency may not be the ultimate goal. Instead, we may aim to solve some of China's toughest challenges and help realize the Chinese dream.

Consider the massive migration of millions of Chinese to urban centers. Previously, city planners could only build brick-and-mortar stores and shopping malls to meet increasing demand. Today China is on its way to becoming the largest e-commerce market in the world, and this has profound implications for the development of its cities. It gives city planners more room to create parks, keep city centers beautiful and improve the quality of life while embedding the benefits of e-commerce into the design of the city.

Or take the traffic situation during the Chinese New Year. Every year when millions of Chinese return home for China's most important holiday, all transportation systems - from the highways to ticketing systems - buckle under the great load. Advances in big data and cloud technologies can provide solutions. As vehicles become connected devices, traffic patterns can be optimized Ask yourself, why do we have red lights at times when no cars are approaching? Likewise, when millions request a train ticket at the same time, cloud-based big data applications can scale to meet the surge in demand.

The power of today's technologies makes it possible to collect, analyze and distribute large amounts of data from connected devices in real time. China can apply this to improve food safety. With millions of items and hundreds of participants in the food supply chain, the source of an item can be hard to trace. At its core, this is a supply management problem. Advanced information systems can combine information from growers, vendors, suppliers, processors, and retailers into a transparent, real-time system to address this challenge.

Is this all wishful thinking? One important development that has made this all possible is relatively cheap technology. Today's smartphones are more powerful than upscale PCs from a decade ago. And now powerful software solutions can be used on-premise, in the cloud or on mobile devices. We are more capable than ever of rethinking the potential of what is possible.

I am most excited about the countless entrepreneurs in China who are rethinking what is possible. These innovators will create new businesses that will draw on the power of IT in completely new ways. They will make the Chinese dream their own. The world will see and benefit from this success story.

The author is senior vice-president, head of fast growth markets and China growth plan at SAP, and one of the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders for 2013.

(China Daily 05/10/2013 page8)