Students from XJTLU-IBSS Won the First Prize in the National iCAN Innovation and Entrepreneurship “Jingchuang Cup” Competition

In the recent 2024 iCAN Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition "Jingchuang Cup" Digital Economy Decision Innovation Challenge ("iCAN Competition") National Finals, a student team from Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) won the national first prize. The team members include Haoqi Zhu, a sophomore majoring in Economics, Ziyi Xu, a senior majoring in Marketing, and Ziyue Zhang, a sophomore majoring in International Business. This final round saw 140 universities from various regional competitions across the country, with only 20%, 28 teams, receiving the first prize, fully demonstrating the outstanding innovation and comprehensive capability of XJTLU students. After half a year of selection through school competitions, regional competitions, and national finals, the XJTLU team stood out among more than 2,000 teams from over 400 universities, highlighting the students' extraordinary strength in the field of innovation and entrepreneurship.

The iCAN Competition, initiated in 2007, has successfully held seventeen national innovation and entrepreneurship competitions, discovering and cultivating a group of promising young innovative talents. The "Jingchuang Cup" Digital Economy Decision Innovation Challenge is a sub-competition of the iCAN Competition, aiming to build an ecological platform for digital economy innovation talents. By simulating the business operation of a platform company from pure market competition to oligopolistic competition, it helps university students to exercise abilities in big data collection and analysis, making digital financial decisions, recruiting digital talents, building digital trading platforms, ensuring platform digital security, implementing digital marketing, and intelligent logistics, and other operations. This allows students to further understand the operation mechanism of the digital economy, master relevant professional skills, and adapt to the comprehensive abilities needed by the future job market.

The team leader, Haoqi Zhu, said: "Participating in the iCAN Competition is a valuable learning and growth opportunity. Through the simulation operation of the intelligent e-commerce platform, we deeply understood the multi-dimensional advantages brought by the integration of digital technology and the real economy. In addition, the competition has trained our team's abilities in data analysis, risk estimation, and capital allocation, laying a solid foundation for our future career development."

Dr. Jianwen Zheng, Dr. Xiao Wang, and Dr. Yue Jiang, academic supervisors from IBSS, highly praised the team's performance: "Our students have demonstrated excellent learning ability, innovative thinking, data analysis, and business decision-making skills. Standing out in the fierce national competition not only highlights the efforts and professional qualities of individuals and teams, but also fully demonstrates the solid academic foundation, outstanding comprehensive skills, and the potential of the students from XJTLU."

Recently, the school held an awarding ceremony for all XJTLU-IBSS students participating in the iCAN Competition. Dr. Nimesh Salike, the Associate Dean of Learning and Teaching of IBSS, said that the iCAN Competition received a positive response from the students. In addition to the team that won the national first prize, congratulations also go to the other students who participated in the competition, as participating in such business competition also trained the students' business insight, teamwork, and problem-solving abilities. In the future, IBSS will continue to support students in participating in various business competitions, encourage students to improve their innovation, teamwork and other transferable skills. We will also continue to strengthen cooperation with other schools and enterprises to provide more practical opportunities and career support for our students.

Ms. Hailu Hou, IBSS Career Counsellor and Ms. Bingxuan Zhou, IBSS Student Employability Officer from Work Placement, Employability and Career Development (WEC) team, summarized that since June this year, they have successfully organized a series of training activities, team-up, and campus competitions. A total of 72 IBSS students actively participated, forming 24 teams. In the fierce campus preliminary competition, 10 teams from the 24 teams stood out. In the subsequent semi-finals, these 10 teams competed again, and finally 5 teams represented XJTLU in the regional competition, achieving impressive results: 1 first prize, 2 second prizes, and 2 third prizes (the specific list of winners is attached). It is particularly worth mentioning that one XJTLU team performed excellently in the national competition, winning the national first prize and bringing glory to the school. In the future, WEC team will continue to provide students with comprehensive guidance, training, career activities, and business competition opportunities, helping students to improve their comprehensive abilities and lay a solid foundation for their future careers.

News contributed by: Hailu Hou and Bingxuan Zhou

Photography: Ziyue Wang and Zhuoheng Li

Award Winners List