The State Council issued a circular on Sept 26 to support the ongoing reform of mass entrepreneurship and innovation and the Internet Plus initiative with four measures: popular entrepreneurship, crowd-sourcing, collective support for small and micro businesses and start-ups, and crowd-funding.

The four measures are in fact the platforms that the government is trying to build to support popular entrepreneurship and innovation and the Internet Plus initiative, which will inject more dynamism and innovation into the economy.

According to the State Council, the four measures will work together to create a better environment and opportunities for the market, optimizing allocation of resources and providing new platforms for popular entrepreneurship and innovation.

Aimed at gathering innovation resources from society and lowering costs for innovation, popular entrepreneurship is one of the important measures to attract and support individual intellectuals. It does this by integrating science park and business incubators with Internet platforms and encouraging leading Internet technology companies to provide open platforms for small and micro businesses and start-ups.

Crowd-sourcing is a method that enterprises and institutions use to outsource businesses or operations to smaller companies or individuals with the help of Internet technology so that efficiency will be improved and costs will be cut.

Collective efforts will be made to jointly support small and micro businesses and start-ups. According to the State Council, universities and scientific research institutions will be encouraged to open scientific research facilities for small and micro businesses and start-ups and large and medium enterprises will be encouraged to support them by establishing open platforms and sharing resources. Also, open-source communities, developer communities, resource-sharing platforms, donating platforms and entrepreneurship salons will be encouraged to build up mass support for entrepreneurship and innovation.

Crowd-funding also is a significant measure to support popular entrepreneurship and innovation by raising funds from society via the Internet to meet financing needs for small and micro businesses and start-ups.

To carry out the measures, supporting financial and tax policies will be implemented and a better market environment will be created with appropriate regulations, the State Council’s circular said.