Companies embrace technology to drive growth

Business leaders at a panel discussion during the summer Davos in Dalian, in Northeast China's Liaoning province, on Thursday have confirmed technology will bring tremendous changes to the world economy and companies from various sectors, which are actively embracing new technologies to drive future growth.

BG Srinivas, group managing director of PCCW Limited, a leading telecomm company in Hong Kong, said while paying attention to the change of customer demand, his company focused on new technologies in telecom and media so the company could leapfrog and expand its footprint outside Hong Kong.

Aireen Omar, CEO of the Air Asia Berhad airline headquartered in Malaysia, further shared how her company benefited from the adoption of the technology.

"As demand for travel and expedience in Southeast Asia increases, the company has encouraged its customers to book tickets online and, as a result, some 80 percent of its bookings come from the internet, which generate a lot of data," Omar said.

"(Therefore) we've invested a team to analyze the data to understand consumer behaviors, making it possible for the company to provide consumers with products they didn’t realize they wanted."

Hu Weiwei, the founder and president of Chinese bike sharing company Mobike Technology Co, said the advancement of technology, in fact, spurred nascent businesses.

"The birth of Mobike is based on an advanced mobile payment system in China," he said.

"The company launched its shared bikes, an innovative solution to address consumers' short-distance travel demand, in April last year, and now has had daily riders of 20 million people."

Catherine D. Wood, company CEO and founder of ARK Investment Management, a US based investment institution, said the company now focused its research on five major technology areas for investment opportunities – including genomics sequencing, robotics and automation, energy storage and the next generation of internet, which included artificial intelligence, deep learning, machine learning and block chain technologies.