How time flies and another year has passed sneakily. In the face of a series of uncertainties, both known and unknown, DKU InE has been on an unremitting quest for a better-reformed combination of social innovation and campus services, turning DKU students’ imaginations into practicable actions in the year 2022.
In 2022, the InE held various events to enlighten the innovative potentialities inside DKU students. The Entrepreneur Speaking Series (ESS) and DKU iNNOVATION iNCUBATOR (Dii) continued to spread innovative ideas and entrepreneurial spirits to DKU students, allowing them to display their creativity and talents more bravely with sufficient support. In addition, DKU InE spared no effort to bring students closer to real-life challenges by cooperating with leading enterprises/NGOs. The University-Corporation Innovation Lab (U-Corp) took the needs of companies into account to offer projects in a wide range of industries for students to apply for. Students became real “members” of the partner company and generated proposed solutions by thinking as researchers, decision-makers, and practitioners.
Moreover, innovative corporations and practitioners were introduced to several workshops to teach students practical entrepreneurial skills. Through the rich and colorful activities in the past year, DKU InE assisted DKUers in broadening their horizons, addressing urgent social issues, interpreting the frontier challenges in the industry, cultivating their ability to explore the details in daily life, and perceiving the world independently, from which the innovation and entrepreneurship have naturally become an essential part of their life. In the future, DKU InE will continue to carry out more insightful activities and projects to inspire innovation and make improvements.
In the past year, various lectures and activities provided by InE fueled students to keep moving forward and offered students a chance to be exposed to new things. In the ESS sharing sessions, entrepreneurs, creative practitioners, and corporate executives generously shared their past experiences to meet students’ unlimited thirst for industry-related knowledge and first-hand career suggestions. All the events gave young entrepreneurs advice on their entrepreneurial path, shared how they seized the opportunity and used global educational resources of the new era, and unveiled the “key to success” in marketing, which surely expanded the breadth and depth of the sharing topics.
Besides, InE also held different workshops in 2022, allowing students to combine learning with practicing – the Zmack Improv4Everyone Workshop at the beginning of the year, the UI/UX Design Workshop, and the Enable Creativity with Design Thinking Workshop … The workshops provided DKUers with innovative practical skills and unforgettable experiences beyond the university courses. The excitement of acquiring new knowledge and inspiration has certainly grown stronger in the past four seasons. Next year, InE will continuously offer 3D printing services to the broader DKU community and organize 3D printing laboratory tours in DKU, giving students the opportunity to design and produce 3D printing works independently. What will other fabulous ideas be formed in the future? Let’s look forward to the next chapter.
IB 2049 Innovation Lab
Each year during the application season, Dii receives dozens of applications from start-up teams combined with students coming from different grades. Dii is definitely one of the most impressive programs on campus for providing sincere support to any start-up idea, including abundant financial support, detailed advice on entrepreneurship, and follow-up resources. At the same time, the “Dachuang” project comes as expected to support students’ innovative thoughts. From solving practical problems around us to solving real-life issues with field research, students endeavored to explore the unknowns that await discovery in the year 2022. There were both old candidates and new applicants who joined Dii this year. The TS-GO project, which combined augmented reality technology (AR) with youth education, got its own place of operation and was working towards the landing of the project. With the support of Dii, two new teams were awarded international silver medals among more than 350 competitors this year in iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition). The DKU Sitdown Studio team designed many relevant souvenirs for advertising DKU, turning their creative ideas into products … Due to limited word constraints, we can’t map all the outstanding projects in one article, but we believe every team will continuously grow fearlessly on the fertile land of DKU.
For 2022 Spring/Fall U-Corp projects, either concrete or theoretical, all “addressed the real-life issues.” InE unrevealed real challenges to the participants and assisted students in identifying the core difficulties involved. From using metaverse and NFT techs to unravel the “brand image construction and IP construction” to digging through the miscellaneous news to figure out the beginning and end of “the development process of China’s quantum computing,” each team presented their shining insights unreservedly to the audience and stakeholders and received valuable feedback. Although the project might seem immature at the beginning, the students methodically explored the real world under the guidance offered by InE and finally generated an insightful and valuable report – the experience they gained through the journey matters more than everything.
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In this year’s InE projects, the students’ benevolence was greatly aroused when they made efforts in charity-related projects. They conducted field research to get closer to the community they lived in to construct a more holistic understanding of the world: they entered the largest job-hunting market in Kunshan to investigate the consumption behavior of blue-collar workers; they went into rural areas to investigate the nutrients in the daily intakes of left-behind children. Changes were also taking place from the various projects: Hear-at considered how to create a handy tool to help the hearing-impaired group; Elderly-E walked elderly people through the cyber world of smartphones, equipping the elderly with “eyes and ears connected with the E-world.” U-Corp @ Huochai team, dedicated to empowering rural education, has already owned its DKU charity group on campus. Their charity-sale bazaar has spread warmth from Kunshan City to every place in China. Every sincere smile and grateful feedback the team received were the best rewards for every effort they have put into lightening up the world.
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In the twilight of the past year, the celebration of the New Year Festival is ushering a new era. The story of InE in 2022 is ended. Looking back on the past 365 days, InE tirelessly committed to nurturing every whimsical idea generated on the DKU campus.
Looking ahead, many changes await to be made in 2023. The new campus area is about to open, and our remote students with aspirations will join us soon in Kunshan. The international students can finally interact with their peers in person and jointly uncover the unknowns after the pandemic. Even though we can not foresee every “Eureka” moment in the future, we firmly believe that InE will cultivate students to keep experimenting, spreading altruistic love, and moving forward bravely.
In the year 2023, DKU InE will, as always, enlighten and nurture every young soul to flourish.