First WIEE Opened in Tongji University

First WIEE Opened in Tongji University May 24,2018

111 domestic and overseas cities, companies, universities and organizations opened their container--like theme halls, the Culture & Technology Exhibitions displayed the world’s latest results in global innovation, entrepreneurship, makers and creativity; a few summits and lectures were given by famous figures from political, academic and business communities; university campus has become the stereotype expo venue of innovations of future cities and maker’s park for mass involvement. On the morning of May 19, under the guidance of the Ministry of Science and Technology and Shanghai Municipal Government, and in the framework of Pujiang Innovation Forum, Tongji University and Jiading District Government in Shanghai co-hosted 2018 World Innovation & Entrepreneurship Expo (WIEE) in Tongji University, Jiading Campus. The Innovation & Entrepreneurship Carnival will last one year on the campus. The event was held also to celebrate the 111th anniversary of Tongji University.

The WIEE Opening Ceremony was held in Gas Film Gym in the university, which was attended by Vice Chairman Cai Dafeng of the NPC Standing Committee, Mr. Xu Guanhua, the former Minister of Science and Technology, Chairman of Pujiang Innovation Forum and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Vice Chairwoman Zhao Wen of CPPCC Shanghai Commission, Ms. Dong Yiwen, Executive Member of CPC Jiading District and Vice Mayor of Jiading District, Mr. Zhao Liang, Vice Mayor of Yangpu District in Shanghai, Suzhou Mayor Li Yaping, the representative of partner cities, President Tuula Teeri of IVA in Sweden, representative of partner universities, Party Secretary Fang Shouen of Tongji University, and Mr. Zhong Zhihua, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and President of Tongji University. Mr. Cai Dafeng declared open the 2018 WIEE. Mr. Wan Gang, Vice Chairman of CPPCC and Chairman of China Association for Science and Technology delivered the congratulatory speech via video clip.

In his speech, Mr. Chen Guanhua said, of the many topics of Pujiang Innovation Forum, Innovation & Entrepreneurship has been one of the core topics. Tongji University, as one of the earliest initiators of Pujiang Innovation Forum, hosted WIEE this year and included it into the Forum framework. It makes the Forum audiences younger and becomes a major support for the Forum to become target of future development, adding a new highlight for the New 10 years of the Forum.

In the video speech, Mr. Wan Gang said he was pleased at the opening ceremony of the first WIEE during the National Week of Science and Technology Activities. Unable to make presence because of busy work schedule, he expressed congratulations to the 111th anniversary of Tongji University, where he graduated, and to the opening of the WIEE. Hosting WIEE is a major move for Tongji University to build the first-class university. He believed that, by organizing this event, Tongji University will establish the new model of innovation & entrepreneurship that can be duplicated and promoted, thus helping to build Shanghai into the center of innovation and technologies while contributing China wisdom and plans to innovation & entrepreneurship in the world.

On behalf of Party Secretary Zhang Xi of Jiading District, Ms. Dong Yiwen said in her speech that she hoped the WIEE, as the stage of innovations, can present more cases of innovations and help more entrepreneurs realize their dreams. As the local government, Jiading District will actively build the “tropical rainforest” and provide the holistic service and guarantees for the companies and talented people intending to make innovations or start-ups in Jiading District.

In his speech, Mr. Zhong Zhihua said universities are sources and engines of innovations while functioning as the major front of fostering innovative people. In the process of implementing the innovation-driven development strategy, universities play the role that cannot be replaced by others. IWEE, as the main field to provide education of innovation and entrepreneurship, is the propeller ensuring inter-disciplinary development and pilot-test field accelerating application of technological results; IWEE is the specific move of Tongji University to implement the strategy of innovation-driven development. It is another action of Tongji University to serve economic and social development by holding the mentality of Benefiting the World.

Vice Mayor Zhao Liang of Yangpu District and Party Secretary Yu Liyuan of Shanghai Commission of Education and Health Care jointly initiated the IWEE innovation results and released the demands.

During the IWEE period, the event will work with relevant parties to host a series of activities. At the Opening Ceremony, Lou Yongqi, the General Planner of the first IWEE and Dean of College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University joined the representatives of partners to release the cooperation activities in the first IWEE, including Young People’s Creativity in Communities, 2018 Shanghai International Makers Competition, 2018 Young Makers Competition across Taiwan Strait, 2018 International STEAM Education Summit, 2018 Sino-US Young Makers Competition, IWEE Creative Thinking Festival, 2018 Slush-Shanghai and MakerFaire.

Release World Declaration of Innovations and Entrepreneurship

At the Opening Ceremony, the participating cities, companies, universities and organizations from home and abroad co-released the World Declaration of Innovations and Entrepreneurship (Shanghai Declaration).

The Declaration points out that universities are becoming the origin place of innovations and entrepreneurship, which is also redefining future universities; cities provide new market for new technologies, new land for new companies, and gene bank for new culture. Cities are always places full of energy for innovations and entrepreneurship; all companies in the world should focus on innovation stimulus, and support the whole society to upgrade innovations; as new industries emerge, innovation & entrepreneurship is reshaping future companies; pushed by new technologies, various international and social organizations will promote exchanges of science, technology, economy, society and cultural innovations, thus helping to form the global cooperation ecology for innovations and entrepreneurship in the online and offline approach.

The Declaration highly praises IWEE efforts to promote global resources in innovation & entrepreneurship, apply technological results, build cooperation platforms, foster innovative people, make innovations in economic and social service and in mechanism and institution, make pioneering efforts and work together to help realize the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The Declaration believes it is necessary to, through innovation & entrepreneurship, realize seamless cooperation among companies, universities, cities and organizations, share latest innovative technologies, concepts, models and cases made by mankind, co-develop the experience, policies, market and environment for innovation & entrepreneurship, identify the sustainable, creative, tolerant and balanced growth pattern, and co-build the global community for innovation & entrepreneurship.

The Declaration says, “We will carefully conclude the outcomes, experience and thinking gained at the first IWEE, organize more IWEE events in the world on a regular basis,and prepare to establish World Innovation & Entrepreneurship Organization so that innovation & entrepreneurship will become the global link in the new era of cooperation”.

Innovative exhibits are closely related future lifestyles

On the first day of IWEE, the cities, organizations, universities and organizations from home and abroad opened their theme halls, attracting many visitors from and outside the campus.

The first IWEE saw the presence of world cities including Espoo from Finland, Miami from USA, St. Etienne from France, Belgrade from Serbia, Shenzhen, Suzhou, Jiaxing and Haining from China, famous universities including MIT from USA, Aalto University from Finland, Polytechnic University of Milan from Italy, Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, and Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the companies from China and abroad including FRENDZONE Decoration, Angel, UNIQLO, FENG YU ZHU, BMW, Vanke and AVARTE, and domestic and overseas organizations such as UN Creative Cities Network, World Design Organization, Maker Faire and Slush, etc.

In the IWEE main venue, Intelligent Cloud Dome, the Clothing/Food/Residence/Travel/Culture/Entertainment section, which had Vice President He Genxiang of Shanghai Association for Young Creative Talents as the curator, displayed exhibits that are in the frontier of innovations. The section corresponded to the container exhibition section in the main venue. These exhibitions are closely related to people’s daily life and future lifestyle. Because of their original designs and many attractive points, the exhibitions attracted great attention. The Future Residence, Future Life and Future Transport were three featured sections in the first IWEE.

MIT Media Lab and College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University jointly built the world’s largest container exhibition hall, showcasing how to apply latest data technologies in future cities; UNIQLO established the two-level transparent container exhibition hall and launched the UT2018 Exhibition with Global Creativity.

Intelligent prefabricated building represents the orientation of Future Residence. The Lifting House with adjustable floors, the magic townhouse that can be moved or deformed, the light-steel prefabricated building of Best Steel, the 3D intelligent public bus stop of WINPOWER, and modular building of GEKEA, etc.

In the future, how will people make travels? For the first time, MIT theme hall exhibited the PEV unmanned smart vehicle, which can carry people and goods; transport mails and small parcels in the rush hours. NIO, China’s own brand of automobiles, also exhibited its seven-seat intelligent electric vehicle and shared vehicle; Tongji University exhibited its unmanned hygiene vehicle and magnetic suspension research and application result developed on its own. The luxury brand BMW and super race car brand Aston Martin also launched its latest model and transport means at the event.

In the exhibition section of Future Life, a number of domestic and overseas brands also exhibited their cutting-edge innovation results. Angle, the leading company of water-purifying industry in China that has launched its new-generation whole-house water-purifying system; FRENDZONE as the leader in customized decoration; ROBOOOT that produces the intelligent door docks controlled by light strobes, the Domibox unmanned retail, the steamed stuff bun brand Gan Qi Shi, the western fast food brand Melrose that launchs the first unmanned container selling pizzas, and Noodle Master noodle-making machine, etc.

The IWEE collected 111 innovative results to be auctioned in the event period.

A few summits develop the feast of innovation & entrepreneurship thinking

The first IWEE was themed on “innovation & entrepreneurship realizes dream”. The main venues included Jiading Venue (in Tongji University, Jiading Campus) and Yangpu Venue (Tongji University, Siping Road Campus + Siping Sub-district). The event consisted of five sections, namely, IWEE Opening Week, Innovation & Entrepreneurship Theme Exhibition, Innovation & Entrepreneurship Summer Holiday Carnival, Global Future Theme Week, and Pujiang Innovation Forum.

During the IWEE Opening Week period on May 19-26, a few theme summits were held, where innovation leaders in various industries and alumni of Tongji University will share their practice and thinking of innovation & entrepreneurship, so as to build the feast of thinking for innovation & entrepreneurship.

On May 19, the Summit of Future Trend will discuss how to use new technologies to make holistic evolution and secure harmony and co-existence with the new world.

On May 20, The Forum of Exceeding Smart Cities, co-hosted by Tongji University and MIT Media Lab, will study the service platform built on the smart cities, the joint creative city buildings and mankind future; in the International Forum of Policy Innovations, the index of innovation, entrepreneurship and VC will be released; the IWEE partners will convene theme meetings to discuss “future of innovation & entrepreneurship” and new era of cooperation; the Alumni Innovation & Entrepreneurship Conference Celebrating the 111th Anniversary of Tongji University, in which the Tongji University Alumni Industrial Innovation Alliance and Tongji University Entrepreneurs Club will be established.

On May 21, the Summit on Future Education will systematically consider what kind of education will be provided to the future generations in the new wave of technologies.

On May 22, the Forum of City Art will discuss how the space art will grow and influence our life in the contemporary urban environment.

On May 26 and 27, the IFI World Domestic Design Day, NICE 2035 Future Life Design Forum will be held in the main venue in Yangpu.

When the first IWEE was opened, the Yangpu Innovation Forum was also opened, becoming a new highlight of New Decade of Yangpu Innovation Forum. Co-hosted by the Ministry of Science and Technology and Shanghai Municipal People’s Government, Pujiang Innovation Forum has been held successfully for ten session. The 2018 Pujiang Innovation Forum will be held in Shanghai on October 30-31, whose theme is “innovation development in the new era and supply-side structural reform”.

The diverse activities

In the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Summer Holiday Carnival (July-September), a number of events and theme activities have been arranged, including Sino-US Young Makers Competition, Joint University of Mainland China, HK, Macao and Taiwan, FABO Technology Summer Camp, Young Makers Competition across Taiwan Strait, and International STEAM Education Forum, etc. In this period, Maker Faire, the world’s first maker carnival, will be held in Shanghai; Slush, the innovation & entrepreneurship platform with greatest international influence will be introduced, and China’s largest Slush conference will be held. These activities will attract many students from universities, middle schools and primary schools, thus building the innovation & entrepreneurship community featuring global sharing and efforts.

Innovation & Entrepreneurship Theme Exhibition will be held concurrently with the IWEE, including Research Innovations and Cultural Innovation. The Research Innovations Exhibition adopts six topics, namely, future city, future transport, future manufacturing, future environment, future health and future life. The Cultural Innovations Exhibition Section also has six topics, namely, artistic creativity, brand strategy, stage performance, extreme sport, game interactions and leisure & catering. At the weekend, Creative Marketplace will also be held. The six topics in Research Innovations cover the most dynamic vertical industries. Behind these topics are not only the innovation industries worth one trillion RMB, but also make the event the major venue that meets people’s demand for happy life and solves the problem of imbalanced and incomplete development. It is also the major venue for Tongji University to continue to push forward development of world’s first-class university and first-class disciplines.

By January 2019, Theme Week of Global Future will be held, which focuses on future cities and follow the trend of intelligent fusion. The Tongji University’s schools of first-class disciplines, such as the schools of civil construction, architecture, planning, design, environment, oceans and transport will be responsible for organizing the theme weeks of future building, future residence, future transport, future manufacturing, future economy, future health and future culture. These disciplines, in the form of forum, exhibition, roadshow and workshop, combine innovation & entrepreneurship with building of first-class disciplines. The weeks of future theme will last till May of next year, which will conclude the IWEE.

Push Future City solutions to the Belt & Road

According to Mr. Wu Zhiqiang, the Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Vice President of Tongji University and Chief Command of 2018 IWEE, universities are origins of innovative technologies and talents, and the core force of innovation & entrepreneurship. As the major measure to push forward building of first-class university and disciplines, Tongji University works with a number of famous universities, innovative cities, innovative companies and organizations from home and abroad to plan and organize the first IWEE, which is designed to absorb and pool the world’s innovation & entrepreneurship elements, build the world’s first-class platform for display and interaction of innovation & entrepreneurship and expo brand, build the global community of innovation & entrepreneurship, help with fostering of innovation & entrepreneurship talents, push forward exchanges and results of global innovative technologies and talents, speed up technological innovation and development of emerging industries, and intend to establish the new model of innovation & entrepreneurship that can be duplicated and promoted. IWEE will not only help Shanghai build the world’s influential center for innovation and technology, but also contribute China wisdom and solutions to innovation & entrepreneurship in the world.

IWEE will adopt the mechanism driven by both innovation & entrepreneurship and university & city, thus building IWEE into the innovation eco-system that solves practical problems in the interactive way, and the converter of innovation results. In the Opening Week in May, IWEE will present the expectations of elites in various fields for the future. At the same time, the exhibiting partners will release their actual needs for innovation & entrepreneurship in the future. In the competitions in this summer holiday, the students will, in the form of joint working camp, propose their own solutions to the innovation needs and global challenges. In September, roadshows will be held in Slush and other activities in IWEE. By linking with the capital, it will directly apply and commercialize the innovation results. The Weeks of global future held in Tongji University schools will combine innovation & innovation with discipline building.

Wu Zhiqiang said, the IWEE Park, which realizes seamless interaction among companies, universities, cities and organizations via innovation & entrepreneurship, represents the bold outlook of Tongji University on Future Campus. Tongji University will combine IWEE with innovation & entrepreneurship education and practice of its students, so that IWEE will become the classroom and testing field of college students’ innovation & entrepreneurship. The students, transcending disciplines, hierarchy and cultural borders, are bold to make practice and learn in practice to address challenges in the real world.

Online and Offline Combination is a major feature of IWEE, which will establish the demonstration map of global innovation & entrepreneurship project cases and map of innovation demands by establishing the worldwide multiple-dimensional and visualized space information model. The universities and cities will work hand in hand to build the global system of sharing knowledge in future cities. As far as offline development is concerned, the container exhibition hall will be used to display the solutions to innovation & entrepreneurship projects, so as to establish interactions with communities, gain feedback from policy, capital and users, and speed up product iteration and implementation. The successfully-implemented solutions will be provided to developing countries along the Belt & Road. As the global platform of collaborative innovations, IWEE can also find the corresponding demand market for innovative technologies and talents. In the end, the solutions to distributive intelligent modular cities in the future will be implemented in global cities via online and offline interactions.

IWEE information

Different from the “exhibition-visit” model of common expos, Tongji University, guided by the development philosophy of “innovation, coordination, green, open and sharing”, tries hard to make IWEE into the generator that produces many results of innovation & entrepreneurship, featured by synergy and cooperation from various parties. In the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Summer Holiday Carnival (July-September), a number of events and theme activities have been arranged, including Sino-US Young Makers Competition, Joint University of Mainland China, HK, Macao and Taiwan, FABO Technology Summer Camp, Young Makers Competition across Taiwan Strait, and International STEAM Education Forum, etc. In this period, Maker Faire, the world’s first maker carnival, will be held in Shanghai; Slush, the innovation & entrepreneurship platform with greatest international influence will be introduced, and China’s largest Slush conference will be held. These activities will attract many students from universities, middle schools and primary schools, thus building the innovation & entrepreneurship community featuring global sharing and efforts.

In this October-December, IWEE will be suspended temporarily.

It is worth noting that IWEE will adopt the mechanism driven by both innovation & entrepreneurship and university & city, thus building IWEE into the innovation eco-system that solves practical problems in the interactive way, and the converter of innovation results. In the Opening Week in May, IWEE will present the expectations of elites in various fields for the future. At the same time, the exhibiting partners will release their actual needs for innovation & entrepreneurship in the future. In the competitions in this summer holiday, the students will, in the form of joint working camp, propose their own solutions to the innovation needs and global challenges. In September, roadshows will be held in Slush and other activities in IWEE. By linking with the capital, it will directly apply and commercialize the innovation results. The Weeks of global future held in Tongji University schools will combine innovation & innovation with discipline building.