Page 249 - Are You Future Ready?

Chapter Four - Right People

4.3
Social diversity

enhances innovative

capability

Acquiring innovation and technology talents from overseas
has proved to be a shortcut to boost the economic

development of a city and even a country. According to
a study from the World Intellectual Property Organization 247
(WIPO), immigrant inventors owned twice as many patents
as that of the local born Americans in the United States,

from 1990 to 2010. Studies by Richard Wong, Chair of
Economics and Philip Wong Kennedy Wong Professor in
Political Economics at the University of Hong Kong, also
echoed the same point.

In his recent article, Prof. Wong pointed out that the labour
force participation rate in 1996 among immigrants who
arrived in Hong Kong between 1976 and 1996 was 56.9%,

higher than the rest of the population's 49.3%. A similar
pattern is found for recent immigrants that arrived between