What was a simple village of fishermen 30 years ago has transformed into the world’s main factory and is now considered as “the heart of innovation”. A place where it’s possible to make real a concept faster than anywhere else, thanks to its ecosystem of makers, hardware startups (Makeblock), incubators  (Haxlr8r, SeedsStudio), factories (Foxconn) and electronic retailers.

Many electronics companies have established themselves in Shenzhen to be close to the factories and benefit from this hardware ecosystem. Shenzhen hosts the world leaders of drones DJI and Parrot, and the premium but affordable smartphones manufacturer OnePlus.

The Shanzhai culture copies and “augments” existing products with a Chinese, counterfeit touch, a symbol of the Chinese industrious and entrepreneurial mindset. Maker Faire Shenzhen gains traction and becomes both a giant showroom and a conference with good networking opportunities.

Shenzhen is home to a different kind of factory: B.G.I., formerly called Beijing Genomics Institute, the world’s largest genetic-research center. With 178 machines to sequence the precise order of the billions of chemicals within a molecule of DNA, B.G.I. produces at least a quarter of the world’s genomics data—more than Harvard University, the National Institutes of Health, or any other scientific institution.