Workshops to help local entrepreneurs update their skills

The first of a series of workshops for young entrepreneurs, sponsored by the International Innovation Hub and the International Technology Transfer Centre at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, was held in the International Academic Exchange & Collaboration Centre on the South Campus.

The workshops are the result of strategic cooperation between Suzhou Industrial Park Training Management Centre and XJTLU, who are organising innovative entrepreneurship education initiatives and expanding their services from students to the wider community.

The first two-day workshop was designed to help young entrepreneurs update their management skills, broaden their horizons, and complement their business knowledge, and began with a presentation from Miao Jing, head of human resources at Philips, China.

“Entrepreneurs can be very busy and have very little time to focus on self-improvement,” said Hua Qian, division chief of Suzhou Industrial Park Training Management Center. “Also, the international and domestic business environment changes rapidly, and the demand for new technologies is high.

“This type of workshop allows young entrepreneurs to get to know each other and promotes business cooperation,” said Qian.

Workshop organiser Qiuchen Qian explained that the workshop aimed to play an important role in innovation and entrepreneurship education away from the XJTLU campus, with participants getting involved in local industry and supporting the creation of an innovative and entrepreneurial community.

During the workshop, a signing ceremony for the Fab Lab at XJTLU was held, which currently has partnerships with Éolane, Philips, Amazon and many other companies.

"The Fab Lab is a rapid prototyping site,” explained Dechang Xu, director of the Research Office at XJTLU. “It’s available for use by our students and teachers, and we provide mentoring and training from industry professionals to help people turn their innovative ideas into actual products.”

Founded in 2016, the International Innovation Hub at XJTLU is primarily responsible for discovering and nurturing innovative ideas, while the International Technology Transfer Centre, also founded in 2016, oversees the commercialisation of new technologies.

By Hongjing Gou, photos by Yuanyuan Du
Translated by Sihan Liu, edited by Danny Abbasi