Companies must move fast to take advantage of digitally skilled population in the mainland and Hong Kong

Hop on a mainland-bound train in Hung Hom station and you are likely to see the same thing you would see on any other MTR commuter train: people sat hunched over their mobile phones, engaged on WeChat or playing Honor of Kings, one of the mobile games by Tencent Holdings, listening to music or reading work emails.

Herein lies a weapon for corporate growth – digital readiness.

The mainland’s digital readiness, internet technology expertise, use and investment will serve as a powerful base to spur growth. For example, by harnessing the power of digital, China stands to grow its gross domestic product by 3.75 per cent by 2020, the equivalent of adding US$527 billion to the economy during that time frame.

Consider the fundamentals. Earlier this year, we commissioned research on women in the workforce with an eye to see what skills are needed to help women attain pay parity with men.

One of the ancillary insights the research yielded was that in many emerging markets, particularly the mainland, women tended to be as schooled in IT as men, creating a much larger potential pool of candidates for such work.

We found that the digital capabilities of male and female undergraduates in the mainland were fairly equal – 96 per cent of the undergraduate women surveyed said they had taken computing/coding module classes (against 100 per cent of the surveyed men), and 73 per cent of the women students said they thought they adopted new technologies fast, as compared with 79 per cent of the men. A graduate base of nearly universal tech savviness is an essential building block for future ready businesses and nations that can rotate to the new world order.