Premier Li Keqiang on April 27 urged big centrally administered State-owned enterprises (SOEs) to further promote innovation and encourage internal startups, as he presided over a seminar in Beijing.

He said internal ventures will create a new corporate and capital structure for central SOEs, making these big companies more efficient. Twenty-nine ministers, the heads of 109 central SOEs and 10 heads of State-owned financial institutions attended the seminar.

He also visited an exhibition of innovation and entrepreneurship projects from eight central SOEs, including the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp (CASC), China Electronics Technology Group Corp (CETC), China Telecom Corp, and China Merchants Group.

At the exhibition, after hearing that a company encouraged its 160,000 employees to start businesses, generating 25,000 “CEOs” within the company, he said these small teams are the source of vitality at big companies. It is a revolution in management and production concept, said the Premier.

So far, central SOEs have set up 409 innovation and entrepreneurship incubators, with more than 2 million registered users, creating many jobs. Innovation and entrepreneurship are the keys to excellence for both small and big companies, the Premier said.

As the transformation mode from old to new driving engines is changing from time to time, the supervision and service models, such as financing support and tax calculation methods, will also be improved to adapt to the changes, Premier Li said, adding that it is necessary to explore inclusive and prudent supervision models to help the growth of new driving engines.

He stopped at many booths with innovation products such as smart bicycle lock, mini washing machine, magnetic desktop speaker and capture sensors for human body movement.

A person in charge from a central SOE said shyly that these are only small products, to which the Premier replied, “But all these small products have big markets.”

During his visit to the exhibition, Premier Li’s frequent question was, “How many jobs can be created by the innovation products?” Although the number of registered newly added job opportunities at the central SOEs is limited now, the employment potential brought by the mass entrepreneurship and innovation is still huge, said the Premier.