Chief Executive Carrie Lam

This creative coming together makes smart design sense. It makes great business sense, too. Melbourne and Hong Kong, after all, offer singular strengths in business and design. Hong Kong, one of the world's leading financial centres and a global research and business hub, is blessed with a distinctive East-meets-West culture. We are designed to create rewarding connections and to help our partners excel.

Melbourne has been named the most liveable city in the world for the past seven years in a row. Apart from being a multicultural city, Melbourne is also a global centre for technology, health and education, as well as a hub for arts, culture and innovation. Under the theme of Think, Collaborate & Create this year, we all look forward to Melbourne's innovative showcase on how design and innovation are changing contemporary urban landscapes and bringing impacts to our societies and living.

This year's Business of Design Week (BODW) features a wealth of design intelligence and insight. Alongside the BODW Conference and Fashion Asia, there's also the brand new BODW City Programme, which will foster collaboration among local designers and businesses and engage the wider public through workshops, festivals and other happenings in different districts. I look forward, as well, to the Design Centre's collaboration with our Tourism Commission, bringing design and creativity to a wider audience at the community level.

My Government is committed to supporting the design and creative sector. Last year I announced the addition of $1 billion into our CreateSmart Initiative, a dedicated fund for our creative industries. This year my Government is earmarking another $1 billion, this time for our Film Development Fund. It will be used to boost local production, build our film audience and nurture talent, particularly in scriptwriting and script production. It will also help market Hong Kong films as a brand, while focusing on new markets. The Greater Bay Area and the Belt & Road regions in particular, offer great promise for film and our creative industries in general. And I'm delighted to note that a Greater Bay Area & Design discussion was held Monday afternoon as part of BODW.

My Government is also committed to developing design thinking as a problem-solving capability. In the past year, the Design Centre has been organising classes and seminars both at the community level and within the Hong Kong Government. We are now working with the Design Centre to establish an event space here in the vibrant community of Wan Chai, to enhance public appreciation of design and design thinking.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam gave these remarks at the Business of Design Week opening ceremony on December 6.