Since the establishment of the Innovation and Technology Bureau (ITB), the atmosphere for innovation and technology development in Hong Kong has been significantly enhanced over the past year. In the 2017 Policy Address, a series of measures were announced to further foster the development of the innovation and technology ecosystem.

The Government will support the development by the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTPC) of an 'InnoCell' adjacent to the Science Park, which will provide residential units with flexible design and ancillary facilities, such as shared working spaces, for leasing to staff of the incubatees and start-ups in the Science Park, to further strengthen Hong Kong's competitiveness in terms of attracting and accommodating the best enterprises and individuals from the global talent pool. Furthermore, an 'Inno Space' will also be established with the Hong Kong Productivity Council, to facilitate the sharing of practical technologies and skills to promote the translation of innovative and technological ideas into industrial designs or products, and support a start-up culture and the re-industrialisation of Hong Kong.

In addition, $500 million has also been earmarked for the ITB to assist government departments in using innovation and technology to enhance the quality of public services in the coming five years.

The development of innovation and technology has always been high on the Government's policy agenda. An array of initiatives with total funding of HK$18 billion to boost the innovation and technology ecosystem were announced in 2016 Policy Address and Budget.

There are many ways to nurture talent and it is an ongoing process. For example, with the backing from the Innovation and Technology Fund, a team of researchers from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has fostered the development of CloudRidAR, a Hong Kong-first cloud-based infrastructure for mobile augmented reality. This provides cloud computing or edge computing which allows all the processing to be offloaded to another device, which enables users to speed up the demanding computation load required for AR while also reducing battery consumption on their own device. CloudRidAR also enables smartglasses to accelerate the processing of virtual images, which helps interact with their users more quickly. The use of AR is become a global trend. CloudRidAR can help shorten the time needed by developers in building an AR app from scratch, from three months to one week, hence, will be helpful to the young developers when they want to create their companies. The team will submit its research results to the Government in June, and will have a market launch of the system later.