New Normal and Rethinking:
Global Innovation in Post COVID-19 Era
Strategic Themes:
Global Trends, Opportunities and Challenges in Post Covid-19 Era for International Collaboration in the Global Higher Education, Global Economy and Science & Technology Innovation Strategic
The theme for September 2021:
Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the Global Higher Education in Post COVID-19
On the 27th of September 2021, the EICC 5th Global Innovation Webinar Series-- Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the Global Higher Education in Post COVID-19 was successfully held with participants and distinguished speakers from the UK, Korea, Uganda, and China. This Webinar is continuously supported and co-organized by United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI), Research Centre of Technology Innovation, Tsinghua University (RCTI), and China Association for Management of Technology (CAMOT), and is hosted by ELITE Innovation College Cambridge (EICC), United Kingdom.
Context and Rational
Entrepreneurship is more than simply “starting a business.” Entrepreneurship is a process through which individuals identify opportunities, allocate resources, and create value. This creation of value is often through the identification of unmet needs or through the identification of opportunities for making change. Entrepreneurship is not simply an inherited trait but to a significant extent can be learned and developed. Technological, social, and educational entrepreneurs are often more highly educated than the population average. Entrepreneurs often see “problems” not only as challenges but also as opportunities, then take action to identify the solutions to those problems and the clients who will pay to have those problems solved.
The term “innovation” never stops shining when Joseph Schumpeter, an Austrian economist, coined the term in his book “Economic Development Theory” in 1912. Innovation is central to the well-being of societies, as well as to the health and growth of commercial companies. Innovation is found to be statistically three times more important to growth than other attributes or factors. Innovativeness, including a propensity to engage in new idea generation and experimentation, is associated with performance and so is pro-activeness. It represents great leverage in creating economic value. Innovation manifests itself in many ways and is hazardous to predict, both in its timing and its consequences. The penalty for not innovating is enormous. Technological innovation, the successful exploration, and commercialization of new ideas must underpin ever higher value-adding products, services, and processes. Innovation is not limited to technological innovation only but is more diversified. Innovation leads to the future and changes the world.
During the pandemic, traditional education has been faced with unprecedented challenges. In this challenging time, no doubt universities have a strong commitment to providing the education of innovation and entrepreneurship, but they need to become more innovative and entrepreneurial. Universities need strategic thinking and creative thinking, innovation and entrepreneurship, global and local engagement, with a firm grasp of state of art technology and innovation.
The theme of the webinar for this month is Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the Global Higher Education in Post COVID-19. This webinar was chaired by Ramu Damodaran, First Chief of United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI), 2010-2021.
Two distinguished keynote speakers are Dr. Soon-Heung Chang, President of Handong Global University, Republic of Korea, and Professor Richard Li-Hua, Founder and President of ELITE Innovation College Cambridge, UK. In the panel discussion, two guest speakers are Professor Mutya Tomasi, Kumi University, Uganda, and Professor Sangwha Lee, Handong Global University, Republic of Korea. Professor Chen Jin, Director of Research Centre of Technology Innovation, Tsinghua University, gave the closing remarks at the end of the webinar.
We have heard fresh perspectives from our distinguished speakers on entrepreneurship, resilience, innovation, and creativity that are vital in tackling opportunities and challenges in global higher education in the post-COVID-19 era.
At the beginning of the Webinar, Ramu Damodaran gave his welcome remarks to the participants and audience from the UK, Korea, China, and other countries.
01
Keynote Speakers
Dr. Soon-Heung Chang
Dr. Soon-Heung Chang, President of Handong Global University (HGU), Republic of Korea, gave a speech on “Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Post COVID-19 Era”. At the beginning of his speech, he introduced HGU’s UNITWIN projects. HGU was designated as Korea’s first UNITWIN (=University Twinning and Networking), host university designated by UNESCO in April 2007, and has been running various UNITWIN programs to enhance higher education in developing countries. He highlighted that Handong Global University has been cooperating with 77 universities and 17 organizations in 35 partner countries, and educated around 31,000 professors, graduate and undergraduate students, government officials, businessmen and etc through more than 500 educational programs.
The speech of Dr. Soon-Heung Chang
Dr. Soon-Heung Chang stressed that the breakout of COVID-19 brought difficulties and big challenges for the UNITWIN programs of HGU on the campus in developing countries. Due to the COVID-19, many of the Higher Education Institutions in developing countries were closed. Some of the partner universities of HGU were also having difficulties providing education to their students in the COVID-19 situation. Dr. Soon-Heung Chang demonstrated that they tried “online immersion education” to deliver the programs online and Learning Management System for students, which were new methods of providing their programs that suit the Post COVID-19 Era. However, there still were some limitations such as online courses could not be accessed due to the poor internet environment and some courses could not be done online.
At the end of the speech, Dr. Soon-Heung Chang stated that even though COVID-19 had been a worldwide crisis and brought a hash challenge for people all around the world, there were still opportunities in it such as online education has its own strength which has no time restrictions and even brings more chances.
Professor Richard Li-Hua
Professor Richard Li-Hua, Founder and President of ELITE Innovation College Cambridge, UK, expressed his gratitude for the distinguished speakers and participants from the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI), The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), UNITWIN, Handong Global University, and Kumi University. He highlighted the EICC Global Innovation Webinar was held to stress global issues with global innovation solutions. EICC is delighted to be part of UNESCO-UNITWIN in addressing the development trend, opportunities, and challenges in the global higher education in the post-COVID-19 era with global innovation solutions by working together with Handong Global University. He further pointed out that EICC will make endeavors together with its global technology innovation firms/partners to take the challenges that UNESCO-UNITWIN is currently facing because of the pandemic.
The speech of Professor Richard Li-Hua
Professor Richard Li-Hua introduced the history of ELITE Innovation College Cambridge (EICC) and shared the story about the topic “A Zigzag Journey: Creating an Innovative and Entrepreneurial University”. He highlighted that the idea of creating this university emerged when he was the President and Vice-Chancellor of Sias University in China in 2016. He presented a Working Paper entitled ELITE O2O Initiative in Creating an Innovative and Entrepreneurial University in the Global Higher Education in the Ministry of Education (MoE) Conference, Wenzhou, China, 2016. This idea grows gradually and further developed when he was Founding President of New Beacon Campus in late 2018. With the outbreak of COVID-19, he strongly felt an opportunity to launch this innovative university. Clearly, the pandemic accelerates distance learning and online delivery in global higher education.
In addition, Professor Richard Li-Hua highlighted three words that are even more important in the post-COVID-19 era: Innovation, entrepreneurship, and resilience. He stressed that attributes and the spirit of innovation, entrepreneurship, and resilience are built within the DNA of EICC, which is the hallmark and soul of the College. He stated the importance of resilience. At the end of his speech, he shared the “Work, Study, and Life at EICC”. He stated, “We have set up both Wechat and WhatsApp groups to accommodate different cultures and habits of colleagues in 8 different countries in the global village. In the meantime, we have EICC Work Group, Study Group, and Life Group for colleagues to make engagement with each other, enjoy work, study, and life. In this zigzag journey, we have not only created this innovative and entrepreneurial university but also pioneering the innovative way of work, study, and life during the pandemic and in the post-COVID-19 era. ”
At last, Professor Richard Li-Hua expressed his appreciation for the great support, commitment, engagement, and contribution to co-founders, founding members, our staff, our professors, our students, our alumni, and strategic investors, and our collaboration partners and my family members as well.
02
Panel Discussion
Professor Mutya Tomasi
Professor Mutya Tomasi, Kumi University, Uganda, gave a speech about “Rethinking Innovation in Kumi University in post-COVID-19 Era”. He demonstrated that the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed deficiencies and inequalities in Uganda’s higher education institutions. Kumi University has been particularly affected. He highlighted the influence of pandemic to Kumi University such as Kumi University revenues dropped following closer of physical education by the president of Uganda, student enrolments and ability to pay tuition dropped sharply as economies went into recession and unemployment for parents or guardians rose, government funding declined, and international donations declined. All of the above factors make it difficult to get new investments. He provoked to build new futures for Kumi University and other universities in Uganda. He called for the institutional, intellectual, and ideological struggles and negotiations, and different ways of studying and assessing the value proposition of the university not only for students and other internal stakeholders but also for African societies and diasporas.
Professor Sangwha Lee
Professor Sangwha Lee, Handong Global University, Republic of Korea, introduced himself about his work experiences. Then he highlighted the Next Generation Entrepreneurship Training (NGET) program, which is an intensive training program on entrepreneurship as part of the UNESCO UNITWIN project to help capacity building for sustainable development among developing countries. He stressed that the purpose of this project is to help develop an entrepreneurial mindset in the minds of the people in the developing countries – that gives incentives and nourishes the capacity for sustainable development for them. Through the NGET, the participants will be able to taste the entrepreneurial spirit, learn the basic skill-set necessary to start a new business as an entrepreneur. He also mentioned that Kumi University is the first university to launch this program. And he demonstrated that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they launched the flip learning method, which helps teachers to prioritize active learning during class time by assigning students to lecture materials and presentations to be viewed at home or outside of class. The professors are required to record the lectures that it’s convenient for students to study online. At the end of his speech, he provoked to introduce the flip learning method to more universities in developing countries.
In the Question and Answer section, most of the professors and participants shared their ideas related to how the COVID-19 era brought the opportunities to them, and what they have done during the pandemic to demonstrate entrepreneurship and innovation in global higher education.
03
Closing Remarks
Professor CHEN Jin
Professor CHEN Jin, Director of Research Centre of Technology Innovation, Tsinghua University, gave us some examples to demonstrate entrepreneurship and innovation. He stated that the cooperation between the public and private companies is very important to promote economic development. The government support for private companies is significant as well. He also stressed that innovation is not only for the entrepreneurs or scientists but also for the common people. He stated that innovation should be conducted by wisdom. He gave some examples of the innovative products made by common people, who made big contributions to human society and economic development. Innovation patterns should be open to everyone. At the end of his short remarks, he indicated that the experience and lessons of China’s innovation model can be good examples for other developing countries.
At the end of the webinar, Professor Richard Li-Hua thanked again for all the participants. He stressed that "we are working together. During this challenging time, we have been working together in the promotion of dressing the global issues, variety of fresh perspectives, and fresh elements". He showed his expectations to collaborate with Handong Global University and Kumi University and more partners to work together to address the global issues with global innovative solutions.
Profile of ELITE Innovation College Cambridge (EICC)
Our College
Our College was born during the pandemic with a mission to lead and push innovation. ELITE carries impact and significant connotation. ELITE is an acronym of e-learning of innovation, technology, and entrepreneurship within an O2O Innovation University in global higher education. Almost all the universities and colleges are currently delivering courses online based upon the MOOC experiences since the outbreak of Covid-19. Our intention of the establishment of ELITE O2O (online and offline) Innovative Education Platform is an exploration of an innovative education pedagogy of integrating the delivery of programs, knowledge, contents, and education ethos with a global vision embedded in the teaching and learning strategy built into the technological system of O2O innovation university.
Such a system demonstrates how various features and objectives of innovative and entrepreneurial university can be created, translated, articulated, and achieved. The distinctiveness of this system is to highlight that the teaching and learning model is decided not only with the impact of the virus but also by the nature of knowledge. Explicit knowledge is delivered online while tacit knowledge is transferred face-to-face. ELITE Innovation College Cambridge (EICC), in many respects, is regarded as a globally connected innovative and entrepreneurial university. With our forward-looking global vision, we are well-positioned with strong features in global higher education in the 21st century.
ELITE is an acronym of E-Learning of Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship within an O2O innovation university in global higher education. We are building four distinctive colleges based on the 15 years of scientific research and innovation accumulated by the [China Association for Management of Technology] (CAMOT) on the technology innovation platform of [ELITE Innovation College Cambridge]. Offline tutoring centers located in selected cities are closely connected. Through these colleges, at this stage, we can build strong competitiveness and core advantages together with other academic colleges of the university.
Our O2O Structures
We continue to deliver our legacy and carry forward our footprints, our research philosophy, and educational ethos and stress the organic and intrinsic linkage among attributes and/or factors between and among innovation, technology, entrepreneurship, and global leadership and their complementarities. Hence our globally-connected university with strong features has been underpinned by the four pillars to enhance the student journey and employability:
· Innovation
· Technology
· Entrepreneurship
· Global leadership
Our teaching and learning pedagogy is to explore how competitive advantage and unique set of knowledge and skills can be delivered through strategic management of innovation, technology, entrepreneurship, and global leadership and the organic linkages between and among them in business and management education and management practice.
By using our past experiences and global academic resources, we make every endeavor to convert this special knowledge into general education knowledge in the liberal arts education delivered through our well-crafted teaching and learning pedagogy in our well-established FOUR Colleges:
Camot College of Innovation
Camot College of Technology
Camot College of Entrepreneurship
Camot College of Global Leadership
For more information about this contract, please contact our Global Engagement Office at: globaloffice@eiucambridge.com
