The implementation of a low-cost strategy means that we should reason at the level of the ecosystem. Focusing on value creation for the end user is not enough. When a firm is placed within a complex network, it must create value for the entire ecosystem. Of course, this requires analyzing the different players and their interactions. But we need to go further, with a more collective involvement. This ecosystem approach opens up new areas for design, which we need to learn to drive.

China’s influence on world markets far outweighs the degree of integration of its own banks and financial markets with the rest of the world. While the country has only gradually eased controls on its capital account and foreign exchange markets, illicit flows of capital are playing an outsized role in some overseas markets and industries. This will change. But how and when? The “New Silk Road” project underlines Beijing’s ambition to keep promoting globalization, in a sharp contrast with the rise of protectionism in the US. But the pace of reforms needed to push that process forward has been slowing. Most than anything, Chinese authorities fear the volatility associated with a higher degree of integration.

What sets the Silicon Valley apart from other clusters? Many other countries have tried to emulate this model, but none have matched California’s ability to host dozens of “unicorns,” not to mention thousands of new startups every year. Why do policies fail to replicate this Californian success? Venture capitalists could very well be the differentiating factor.

China and the European Union are two of the biggest traders in the world, trading on average over €1 billion a day. China in 2016 was the largest EU import partner accounting for 20% of EU imports and the EU second largest export partner accounting for 10% of EU export. China’s Belt and Road Initiative launched in 2013, which is to improve the connectivity between Asia, Europe, and Africa by reducing logistics costs, opens new opportunities to Chinese firms in terms of trade and investment. It is the case in Northern Europe in the Baltic Sea Region which is well connected to China by both wings of the Belt and Road: the Maritime Silk Road and the Silk Road Economic Belt.

Being the CEO of a large company facing digital disruption can seem like being a gambler at a roulette table. You know you need to place bets to win, but you have no idea where to put your chips. Of course, digital transformations aren’t games of chance. But they do require big and bold commitments in the midst of uncertainty to reinvent the business rather than just improve it. A successful digital transformation requires making trade-off decisions. Here’s how successful CEOs guide their business’s reinvention.

To remain a leader, a company must out-perform the world’s smartest executives at billion-user platforms. But a new disruption could produce a flip of today’s pyramid to people-first. That would help everyone advance, and add a people-first ecosystem that makes everyone a winner, with many people-first companies at the top.

President Xi Jinping announced the “New Silk Road” initiative in September 2013, first in Kazakhstan, then in Indonesia. One year later, the Asian Infrastructure Investigation Bank (AIIB) was created. In spite of this apparent enthusiasm, the Chinese initiative continues to raise many questions and no less controversial issues four years after its creation. What is its exact nature? What economic and political goals does it hide?

For the SODA organizing committee, the primary goal was to promote open data; innovations and solutions came only second. Whereas for many other cities, their focus was on using SODA’s crowdsourcing model to solve problems. Open data was secondary. But does it have to be either/or? Is it possible to strike a better balance between the two?

Shanghai Open Data Apps, or SODA, is a contest launched in 2015. The acronym is a perfect analogy for what this challenge is about: Data is like soda in the bottle. Usually they sit quietly in the bottle. But once you open it, bubbles of innovation will be sizzling and bursting, carrying tremendous amount of energy. And this is exactly what SODA has managed to do. The themes of the challenge for the last two years were “Smart Transport” and “City Safety”. Working with 30 government agencies and companies, SODA unlocked 64 datasets totaling 4TB of data and designed 852 data innovation apps covering a wide range of areas including transport, finance, and public security.

Tencent’s WeChat is your Whatsapp, Facebook, Skype and Uber, it’s your Amazon, Instagram, Venmo and Tinder, and it’s other things we don’t even have apps for, says the NYT. Gathering all these functions within a single app is already very impressive. But Tencent has even larger goals: WeChat will soon distribute its very own apps. With this move, it takes competition from an app-to-app level to an app-to-OS one.

The partnership between PSL and ParisTech Review, which gave rise to the Paris Innovation Review, reflects a shared vision: for developed economies, as well as for institutions with a global vocation, innovation is the very key to power. Yet one does not simply decree innovation. Innovation dynamics, on the other hand, can be enabled, by enhancing exchanges between disciplines, between institutions, between cultures, between public and private stakeholders, between researchers and entrepreneurs. An institution like PSL is an exchange enabler. Such is also the vocation of Paris Innovation Review.

Digital currency rose to its prominence in 2009, marked by the birth of Bitcoin. The following seven years saw the burgeoning of a 10 billion dollar worth Bitcoin global network, which leads to more discussions from central banks around how to keep up with the trend both systematically and technologically. Debates on the legitimacy of digital currency never end, with speculation around possibilities of its replacement of fiat money, an ensuing prospective governance mechanism and its function akin to that of central banks. If these bold assumptions failed, can this monetary innovation work as a compliment to central bank policies and currency system? This article will look into the above possibilities and assumptions on the basis of existing researches, technologies and regulations, in hope for an all-round thinking and further discussions without giving away any affirmative conclusion due to the complicity of monetary system and early development of digital currency.

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