Lenovo opened Shanghai Future Center on July 29. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Lenovo Group Ltd unveiled a "future center" in Shanghai to showcase how its digital technologies can help advance industrial upgrade, as the Chinese tech titan accelerates steps to empower the real economy.

The Lenovo Shanghai Future Center spread on a 3,000-square-meter exhibition area showcases smart life and smart industry empowered by "new IT" through five scenarios: smart city, smart manufacturing, smart education, smart agriculture, and smart office, Lenovo said.

Qiao Jian, senior vice-president of the company, said innovation is Lenovo's most important magic weapon to win and the company has long been committed to increasing investment in research and development.

"Shanghai is an important R&D base for Lenovo, with the majority of employees here engaged in R&D work. In the future, we will use the Shanghai Future Center as the base to continuously promote the integrative innovation of industries, universities and research centers to empower the real economy through 'new IT', and promote the intelligent transformation and upgrading of the Yangtze River Delta and even the entire East China region."

The move is part of the enterprise's broader push to industrial upgrade and promote intelligent transformation of the real economy. Earlier this year, the world's largest personal computer maker launched a "purple-collar talent initiative" to help foster talents for the new intelligence transformation era.

According to Lenovo, "purple-collar" talents refer to those who meet the requirements of intelligent manufacturing, are familiar with the actual production process, understand the corresponding technical theories, and have both hands-on operation capabilities and management capabilities.