Bending to his will

A major project by Liu Zihong's company is the world's thinnest full-color AMOLED flexible display. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The idea of inventing a thinner, lighter, foldable and portable ultra-high-definition display came to Liu's mind in 2006, when he lay on the lawn of Stanford University in the US.

That year, he was 23 and had just earned his master's degree from China's elite Tsinghua University.

He later joined Stanford's electrical engineering department for his PhD, receiving his doctorate in three years.

He worked for multinational technology company IBM for another three years, before starting his own company in 2012.

Liu's entrepreneurial drive began early. At Tsinghua University, he put together a team of 10 students and invented an "indoor motion simulation system", which allowed users to play golf and bowl at home.

"We managed to make a prototype and intended to start a business," recalls Liu.

But the venture capital sector in China was not mature enough and that held them back, he says.

Years later, when related technology such as motion-sensing game consoles like Xbox started becoming popular across the world, Liu realized that good timing, geographical factors and human relations "are indispensable for starting businesses".

There has been broad and growing respect for Chinese science and technology, he says, with the rapid development of his company in the past five years stemming in part through support from government policy and the domestic funding sector.

The headway made by Liu's company can also be traced to his innate curiosity and passion for research seen during his school days, says Royole's public relations director Fan Junchao, who has known his chairman and CEO for 22 years.

Liu once stayed in the college lab for a whole week just to work on an innovation, recalls Fan.