In 2021, the Chinese government released a new plan for the Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Modern Service Industry Cooperation Zone which made developing South China’s modern service industry a priority.

The epidemic has dealt a heavy blow to the service industry, exposing and amplifying its weaknesses, which, I believe, will prompt the government to pay more attention to the sector and support its development.

Meanwhile, service firms themselves should re-evaluate their operations, identify their weak links, and improve their internal resilience. Though the epidemic has inflicted losses in the short term, the test it presents companies is expected to help improve the industry over the long term.

Given the growing adoption of a customer-oriented strategy among service organisations, customer orientation can constitute an important individual difference variable that shapes reactions to empowering leadership. So, how can empowering leadership motivate individuals with different levels of customer orientation?

There is no doubt that China has made remarkable progress in becoming an innovation-driven economy. The Global Innovation Index 2016 ranked China 25th in the world and first among upper-middle income economies. In this respect, China is once again a role model for emerging economies on how to effectively formulate policies and allocate resources to achieve national goals. As Chinese companies strive to climb higher up the innovation ladder, they should think about engaging more deeply with India in order to leverage its huge talent pool, as their Western counterparts have done for a long time.

A new research study co-authored by Director of the CEIBS Centre for Innovations in Supply Chains & Services Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management Zhao Xiande identifies the five key factors for implementing innovation projects in large organizations. The research received the 2015 Best Paper Award from the European Decision Sciences Institute (EDSI) at its annual conference.