Corporate Use of Innovation winner 2010

Founded in 1988, Huawei has risen to become one of the world's largest makers of telecommunication equipment. The Chinese firm started selling network gear in Asia, Africa and the Middle East in the 1990s, and has since expanded into Western markets. Initially seen as a low-cost vendor, Huawei is now respected for the quality and innovation of its products.

It has been a pioneer in areas such as "remote radio head" technology, which reduces the size and energy consumption of mobile base-stations; reconfigurable base-stations, the features of which are defined by software rather than hardware; and LTE, the emerging standard for fourth-generation (4G) wireless networks. The firm now has over 100 offices abroad and maintains research centres in Europe, America and India as well as China.

Huawei topped the World Intellectual Property Organisation’s 2008 rankings for international patent applications, and was placed second in the 2009 rankings, indicating its commitment to research and development, and its determination to defend its intellectual property abroad. Chinese firms, like Japanese firms in the 1960s, are still associated in some quarters with imitation rather than innovation.

Japanese firms resoundingly overturned this preconception, emerging as world leaders in electronics and carmaking, and forcing the rest of the world to catch up. Huawei is the firm that provides the strongest evidence that the same process is now under way in China.