School News

The 2^nd edition of “Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in China (CIEC)” Summer Programme was successfully completed on August 9, 2022.

Further to the inaugural CIEC programme in 2019, this year, we are happy to have brought together 43 students from different faculties in The University of Hong Kong and other top universities in Australia, Belgium, United Kingdom, and Mainland China for a virtual summer programme. Students from more than 10 nationalities, including American, Austrian, Canadian, Dutch, Filipino, Indian, Indonesian, Korean, Thai and Taiwanese had actively participated in the CIEC programme regardless of their geographic location. The programme was led by Mr. Joseph Chan, CIEC Programme Director, and Dr. Jing Li, CIEC Programme Co-director. Dr. Li was also the instructor of the HKU course offered in the programme.

With the support from Proactive Think Tank, we collaborated with 10 companies from different industries, including culture and event, digital media, finance, innovative technology, professional service, property development and retail to provide students with an in-depth understanding of the latest trend and business development of China’s Greater Bay Area. The programme also provided students with ample opportunities to discuss and present their innovative ideas on hot topics such as Artificial Intelligence, cultural innovation, digitization and ESG.

CIEC Programme Directors, Mr. Chan and Dr. Li, had conducted interviews with guest speakers from 10 companies before the programme began. After broadcasting the interview videos, students got the chances to interact with these industry experts in the Q&A sessions throughout the 9-day programme. These interactive sessions offered valuable opportunities for students, not only to better understand the real business landscape and development of different industries, but also to explore their own future development and planning. 12 speakers for the guest lectures included (in alphabetical order of industry partners):

• Leo Liu, General Manager of Hong Kong, Macau & Philippines, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence
• Dennis Choi, Managing Director, China Resources Capital Management Limited
• Alan Chiu, Managing Partner, ELLALAN (Law Firm)
• Jason Ho, Senior Managing Director, FTI Consulting
• Yee Tsang, General Manager, Grand Field Group Holdings Limited
• Kevin Lai, Angel Investor, PressLogic Limited
• Ms Cherry Liu, Co-founder, PressLogic Limited
• Ms Kitty Kwok, Vice President – eCommerce, Sa Sa International Holdings Limited
• Kevin Wong, Vice President – eCommerce, Sa Sa International Holdings Limited
• Hailong Shang, General Manager, SenseTime Hong Kong
• Howie Chan, Director, SquareFaceChan Media
• Franky Wong, CEO, Yello Marketing Sports Agency

Participants also had the opportunity to explore different cultural spots in Hong Kong through Storius, a start-up company that promote culture with advanced technology. Students were engaged to discuss their views towards the business model and UI/UX design of Storius and proposed directly to the company representatives for improvements.

Both Mr. Chan and Dr. Li made the closing remarks towards the end of the programme. Mr. Chan commended the programme, especially the guest video interviews and Q&A sessions, which gave a lot of insight about doing different businesses and their personal experiences, as well as how the society is being developed in Hong Kong and other cities in China’s Greater Bay Area. “This is a wonderful opportunity to not just learn from the text book about the theory, the economics and finance. It is basically a full package talking about the business model, market, the whole industry landscape, technology, and how to develop the community”.

Dr. Li added that the CIEC has gone through a big transition from a firm visit based physical programme to an innovative virtual programme which brought together different interactive elements throughout the 7-day intensive learning process. Active participation of all students made the whole programme full of interesting and exciting moments, which is the most valuable part of CIEC programme. She looked forward to seeing the development of all participants in Hong Kong or other part of the Greater Bay Area in the future.

Mr. Chan also encouraged all participants, “We need to keep ourselves flexible and use what we know in a flexible way as what you are doing now maybe different in two-month time. By doing so, you would be able to seize the opportunity, no matter what you are trying to work according to the market situation or even leading the trend.”