Simply speaking we can learn from China how the “future of digitalization”, or better the “digital society” will look like – also in Europe.

We can see and experience it in China today, because the future of digitalization is already in progress there.

For German SMEs that means they need to be onsite and active in China to understand the digital future.

German SMEs have many capabilities and competition advantages in areas such as innovation, engineering, product quality etc. Foundation of those is in depth understanding of the market and customer requirements. Today, China is already one of the leading markets in terms of future trends in several areas, especially in digitalization solutions and digital services. Therefore, German SME need to face up to the situation and set up innovation footprint around the globe and in China.

With growing intimacy between China and Europe in the mid and long term, the German enterprises will have great opportunities in China for business success, especially in the high-tech driven and US replacement markets, local innovation is the key and remains as the biggest challenge on the way to success.

Further description:

1. China-US geopolitical conflicts lead to much more openness of Chinese market for European companies in a mid/long run.

2. With change of China's development stage, local innovation is desired to fit market needs, both in new and traditional business sectors.

3. Need to understand "Chinese way for innovation",  incl. transformation inside the company, leverage venture capital, way of IPO in STAR market, empowerment and entrustment of local team.

Digitization/Industrial 4.0, the subjects were hot in China for a while.

China´s B2B market corresponds to this and most local customers recently focus points are e.g.: Sharing the experience on connective, human/machine interface of the data and visualization, those demands more and more request by end user and recognize its value.  

Furthermore,  How to acquire data with quality, how to  excavate data and turn the data into valuable outputs or in future as digital products still as a strategy exaptation without clearly roadmap, how to participate this in right manner and time. To German SMEs, business opportunity can be to share and sell solutions and experience.

Until today the digital B2C economy has been developing fast. Now a second wave of digital innovation is on its way in the B2B industry. Cloud systems, Smart Manufacturing, and Industrie 4.0 solution like Predictive Maintenance are topics in the mechanical engineering that are becoming more and more important. Germany is a global innovation hub in the B2B industry, however China is not sleeping and the industry is developing with tremendous speed.