According to the newspaper, the box office in one month of Avatar is 2.1 billion dollars, which equals the total profits in 2009 of Baosteel Group. Knowledge has become the first element of development for the Age of Service Economy. On October 25^th, ZHANG Xiang, the executive director of CCIEE, and also the honorary dean of School of Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, gave a lecture in ZUEL. He pointed that WUHAN is a potential city for service industry with many universities and abundant resources of talents.

Why is the service economy? He said, like having a birthday cake for a child. Mother A will make the cake by herself with grinded cereal powder. It stands for the times of agricultural economy; Mother B will buy the cake powder and bake at home. It stands for the times of industrial economy; Mother C will outsource the birthday party to a professional company. It stands for the times of service economy. The service economy regards the human resources as its main force of production. The intangible and “soft” knowledge become more and more valuable. 

“The Apple Company is a typical sample of a transition from the traditional manufactories to the service industry.” Said by ZHANG, nowadays there is only a head quarter in Apple, all the formations and packing are outsourced to other foreign companies. The company only sells its ideas, design and marketing to win fans and buyers in the world.

He introduced that in the 1980s, the world economy has transformed into the service economy.  Nowadays, the service industry accounts for 3/5 of the world’s economy. While in China, the scale of the service industries are small, poor-structured and weak competence. Under this context, the outline of the 12^th Five-Year plan has clearly pointed out that developing modern service industry is of great importance. He also said, our chance to develop has come, we should take it.

He was surprised that the scale and number of students in WUHAN ranked top in China, he said that the times of service industry lies in knowledge, the core competence lies in the professional talents. Wuhan is a city with great potential to develop the service industries with the help of so many talents.