At the first Shanghai Y50 Forum for Innovation and Entrepreneurship themed on “Confidence · Opportunity—Innovation and Entrepreneurship  Against the Backdrop of the Pandemic,” an industry leader argued that online new economy has brought numerous opportunities for light entrepreneurship, enabling people to start businesses by making use of internet tools and micro-innovations in niche markets at extremely low costs. This remark cannot be any truer. Shanghai’s online new economy has bucked the trend of a declining economy. Newly-emerged industries, technologies and models have brought about not only new highlights of high-quality industrial development and new growths in economic development, but also a series of new employment opportunities, work forms and development space. This has laid a solid groundwork for successfully containing Covid-19 while maintaining economic and social development, and paved the way for leading future development in the long run and standing out from the global competition. As many as 8.74 million college graduates are expected to enter the job market in 2020, and online new economy provides a new alternative for young people who are looking to start businesses or finding jobs. Online new economy has brought new job opportunities. Relevant data shows that the recruitment demand in the live streaming industry has increased by 1.3 times year-on-year amid the Covid-19 crisis. The entertainment & leisure, education and training sectors have seen a sharp increase in demand for network anchors. Apart from the anchors, many unheard-of new careers have also appeared. For example, the “central control personnel” and “field control personnel” at the middle-end, and the staff engaged in user maintenance, use operation, data operation, investment promotion, sample management, supply chain operation, etc. at the back-end of live streaming operation. Another example is that artificial intelligence trainers newly included in the National Vocational Categories. They need the support of many positions including data analysis, manufacturing, education, security, municipal administration, logistics, human-computer interaction, and transportation. It is no exaggeration to say that online new economy is a “rich motherlode” offering lots of new job opportunities. The online new economy has created new work forms, such as sharing, borrowing, dispatching, and leasing workers, as well as agreement workers, external consultants, freelancers. The era of open talent economy is approaching. Meanwhile, online new economy has changed the traditional mode of working from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day after graduation until retirement, allowing talented minds to have a more diverse work style and a more flexible working curve. Talented minds will no longer depend on large enterprises and institutions for development opportunities. For those who are proficient in digital operations, data design, virtual technology and social media, and excel at interpersonal communication, team building (including virtual team building), cooperation, communication and expression, new formats and new modes including online new economy have ushered in a time of opportunity. The talented minds engaged in computer related work, i.e. computing, caring, catering, consulting, coaching and creativity and ride on the wave of new economy and careers will have a brighter future. Online new economy has created new scope for development. More importantly, online new economy wouldn’t have emerged without the enterprises, research institutes or talented minds daring to innovate and make new explorations for economic and social development, technologies and application scenarios that support innovation, service providers that promote and accelerate innovation, consumers willing to try new things, governments and governors who encourage innovation, institutional mechanisms and policies that promote innovation, or the business environment and social atmosphere that facilitate and protect innovation. To a certain extent, the appearance and development of online new economy reflect the overall innovation ecology, innovation environment and innovation atmosphere of a region. The atmosphere that nurtures online new economy can also cultivate and stimulate innovation, particularly important or suitable to innovative talented minds or innovations. Online new economy is only one of its products and other trail-blazing formats and models will come into being in such atmosphere in the future. Meanwhile, the development of new online economy has further strengthened and optimized the development of innovative ecology. In this atmosphere, the companies, institutions, and talented minds that are interested in and good at innovation, and aspire and dare to innovate have more reasons to settle in Shanghai, more platforms to try, more space to use, and more opportunities to innovate. In the future, it is necessary for us to contemplate on how to promote the development of online new economy and endeavor to activate capacities of new technologies, formats, processes and models by seizing the development opportunity of online new economy. In this way, we can build Shanghai into a birthplace for new economy, technologies, and occupations, and offers talented minds new reasons and opportunities to gather and innovate in Shanghai. (The author is a researcher at the Institute of Politics and Public Administration of Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, and a specially invited researcher at the Shanghai Research Center for Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era) Author: Wang Yi Source: http://wenhui.whb.cn/zhuzhanapp/liping/20200518/348180.html