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Andrea Zavadszky

Whether on the level of the community, national government or international forums, technology’s rapid development is changing the narrative. It disrupts industries and builds new ones, increasingly creating horizontal, multidisciplinary platforms of co-operation for research, and speeding up innovation.
 
Education is among those areas most affected: it has to ensure forward-looking teaching that supports development at a time when this is almost too swift even to follow. Sparking innovation is more important than ever, and supporting entrepreneurship that can put new inventions into practice quickly and efficiently is the only way forward.
 

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) fully supports the changing scientific and industrial landscape, according to its president, Professor Tony Chan.
 

I’m out there to change the world’ here too.

 
“The big change in culture regarding entrepreneurship only happened two to three years ago, but it has been our vision from day one,” Chan says. “We have an Entrepreneurship Centre where we can incubate start-ups until they can move to the Science and Technology Park.” 
 
Beyond the three-year incubation programme offered by the centre, an e-Academy helps students plan, build and manage innovative start-ups, while a training camp offers the chance to form potential partnerships, and bi-weekly Friday Dreamers seminars introduce them to the concept of entrepreneurship.
 
“BYOB, one of the Entrepreneur Centre’s flagship seminar series, has been very well-attended by the university community. BYOB doesn’t mean Bring Your Own Booze,” jokes Chan. “It means Build Your Own Business, and the seminars are given by seasoned industrialists on practical aspects of building a business.”
 
Chan also points to the university’s annual One Million Dollar Entrepreneurship Competition, which this year takes place in June, with several student start-ups in biotech, health and environmental technology among the 12 shortlisted teams in with a chance to win seed money, complimentary use of an office and services in-kind.
 
The recent emergence of the entrepreneurial ethos in Hong Kong has several causes, Chan says: “Now there are role models in Asia and we are just starting to see some in Hong Kong. In addition, alternatives [such as banking and finance] are not so appealing. In Silicon Valley they want to change the world, and there is this ethos of: "I’m out there to change the world’ here too.”
 
Chan too part in a recent pitch night staged by co-working space Cocoon with more than 300 young people in the audience, watching start-ups compete.
 
“Young people think: ‘It’s okay now, I can do it’. In two years, participants have changed from expatriates and returnees to local [youth]. So I’m very encouraged,” Chan says, adding that Hong Kong has great potential but that there are worrying signs of “closing the doors and building a castle”, rather than focusing on how to make Hong Kong the best possible place for start-ups.
 
While HKUST is globally appreciated for its high standards, Chan is also well-known as an academic and thought leader. Before joining the university, he was an assistant director of the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), managing research funding in astronomy, physics, chemistry, mathematical science, material science and multidisciplinary activities.
 
Recognised for his contributions, he became an invited member of the Global University Leaders’ Forum (GULF), which unites 25 universities into a community under the umbrella of the World Economic Forum held in Davos, in Switzerland, every winter.
 
Representing one of just seven Asian member universities, Chan participated in the prestigious GULF, which chose to discuss a topic in its 2015 programme very much aligned with his experience: “How university-industry partnership can help boost high-tech economic growth, create jobs, nurture innovation and drive entrepreneurship”.
 
“The World Economic Forum is committed to improving the state of the world. It focused on the rich and poor divide, scarcity of natural resources and resolving geopolitical crises,” Chan says, adding, however: “The Forum does not have any authority to move the agenda; it’s not something that comes up with a to-do list.”
 
The different programmes – including a special session with Nobel laureates and one-on-one interviews – are so numerous that it is impossible to attend more than about 10 per cent of it. China featured heavily, representing about 10 per cent of the topics.
 
For HKUST, the most interesting part was taking part in the IdeasLab organised by GULF, where they were one of seven universities – and the first from Asia – to be invited to stage a presentation on the merging of the physical and virtual world.
 
Four HKUST professors talked about 5G and the tactile internet, the future of machine translation, computer graphics and artificial intelligence to an audience who were not scientists. The presentations were not too technical but all touched on the new frontiers of technology. The audience had an open mind and asked many questions about the human dimensions and implications of the new technologies, something the professors found refreshing.
 
Chan says: “It is a very global platform. If you make a big speech here, a lot of people can hear it.”


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