The 2017 Tianjin University (TJU) Open Innovation and Entrepreneurship Workshop was held at Weijin Road Campus from February 27th to March 1st. During the three-day session, experts from the European Union, domestic research scholars, TJU students and entrepreneurs together discussed and explored the topic of innovation and entrepreneurship, making recommendations for the development of these two aspects. Tianjin University, as one of the partner universities of the OIPEC (Open Innovation Platform for University Enterprise Collaboration) project, and also the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union co-funded project, hosted the workshop.
The OIPEC mainly focuses on transferring the best European practices in university-enterprise collaborations to Russian and Chinese partners. As one part of the OIPEC, the workshop aims at creating a new type of platform for collaboration with enterprises for partner universities. The platform serves as a sustainable set of value added collaborative activities with enterprises specializing in invention and the improvement of products and services.
Zhao Lin, deputy dean of the School of Environmental Science and Engineering of TJU, hosted the opening ceremony. Shi Liangxing, dean of the Xuanhuai School delivered a welcome speech. Leonid Chechurin, professor of Innovation Management of LUT, Gaetano Cascini, professor of the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering of Politecnico di Milano, and Jean-Francois Boujut, professor of Engineering Design at Grenoble Institute of Technology delivered separate speeches during the workshop.
Prof. Cascini gave his views on exploring the markets and technologies of the future, knowledge management and patent mining. He shared his common vision regarding innovation, opportunities and threats. Technology Forecasting was highly emphasized during the speech. In this part, Prof. Cascini talked about technology forecasting based on experts tacit knowledge and the extrapolation of trends, and then introduced approaches to technology forecasting. FORMAT methodology and exemplary case studies were also mentioned in the speech.
Prof. Chechurin talked about the engineering methods for inventive design and system engineering, and Prof. Boujut introduced C-K Theory. After the speech given by Prof. Boujut and Marko Tuomas Torkkeli, co-founder of the multidisciplinary open-access journal the Journal of Innovation Management, all the participants watched the presentations by the TJU student innovation teams, and visited the "Dahuo" and "Feilong" innovation spaces in Peiyang Park Campus.
Prof. Boujut was amazed during the visit. "I am shocked by the innovation spaces and the laboratories in teaching buildings." said Prof. Boujut, "TJU provides such advanced instruments for students, and I think it's great. TJU students lay emphasis on manipulative ability, while students from Europe always focus on theory. I believe that the manipulative ability is more important, that's what European students don't have."
During the third day’s morning session, experts and entrepreneurs were invited to pay a visit to TJU’s “1895 Innovation Space”, and exchanged experiences, ideas and concepts related to creative product design. “The innovation space is really amazing. One room is full of those techniques, while the next room is full of calligraphy and culture” said Prof. Cascini. The afternoon session mainly focused on communication, representation and innovation within collaborative design, lectured by Prof. Boujut and Prof. Cascini. In his lecture, Prof. Boujut emphasized the dialectic link between thoughts and materials, motivating design from a cognitive and discursive dimension. Prof. Cascini started his lecture from the central concept of innovation, detailed analyzed its four processes. “Innovation is about being open-minded,” said Professor Cascini, “be open to the final goal you want to achieve.”
Prof. Cascini also gave some advice for TJU students: "I think it's important to be ready and active in the development of innovation. Sometimes there are some conditions for making a breakthrough in innovation. But it cannot be that we just aim at breakthrough solutions because it is not sustainable for the world. Pay attention to your goal, it is important to be open to very radical solutions and bring novel ideas around us to overcome the challenging problems we have nowadays."
The entire workshop provided the audience with an relaxed and free atmosphere. Students, entrepreneurs and scholars all actively raised questions and expressed their comments, positively interacting with the experts.
By: Zhang Xuan and Zhang Wanying
Editors: Qin Mian and Christopher Peter Clarke
