Focusing on Global Health Innovation, 3rd International Collidoscope Challenge Concludes Successfully!

Release time：2021-03-18    

On March 9^th 2021, the 3^rd International CollidoscopeChallenge (ICC for short) hosted by FISF EMF concluded successfully. This year, 80 students from 33 universities worldwide gathered to discuss global health issues and launch a storm of innovation. With improved university coverage and a higher level of internationalization, ICC has presented a more diversified and globalized trend.

This time ICC focused on the topic of “Global Health Innovation”, and has attracted applications of thousands of students from universities at home and abroad. Finally, 80 students stood out and were able attend this year’s ICC competition. With improved university coverage and a higher level of internationalization, ICC has presented a more diversified and globalized trend. Competing students come from 33 world-famous universities on four continents, majoring in arts, science, engineering, business, medicine and a variety of other subjects. The universities include the University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins University, London School of Economics and Political Science, National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, University of California, Los Angeles, University of Southern California, University of Toronto, University of Melbourne, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Peking University, Tsinghua University, Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Nanjing University and Renmin University of China.

During the four-day competition, students went from being strangers to friends, experienced a series of brainstorm and cooperation, and accomplished their first innovation plan in life under the guidance of experts in various areas. The plan covers health problems concerning people of all ages, genders and regions. It also pays attention to food innovation, health management, medical services and some other new areas of health innovation, fully reflecting the innovation vitality and social responsibility of contemporary world youths. Let’s look back on the splendid four days together!

Day 1 Opening

At the opening ceremony, Professor Jiajia Hou, Director of FISF EMF program, represented the school in welcoming students from 33 universities worldwide. Hou informed that in order to cultivate the innovative thinking of contemporary university students and strengthening international exchanges and cooperation in youth innovation, FISF organized International Collidoscope Challenge (ICC) for 3 years in a row. He encouraged students to make full use of the ICC platform by developing new inspirations, communicating with other students worldwide of different backgrounds, simulating the innovation procedures of the program and making friends with the same interests and ideals.

Professor Jiajia Hou giving a speech to welcome all the students

In the ice-breaking portion, competing students were divided into 20 teams and each team presented a team introduction on the video. With creative team names and diversified ways of introduction, each team succeeded in impressing.

Industry Sharing

After cheers and laughter from the ice-breaker, Allan Chou, Founder of RAIDiCal Fund and Visiting Lecturer at FISF, officially announced the opening of the ICC topic this time. Chou stated that the ICC campaign is aimed at enriching contemporary students’ global perspective of innovation, and cultivate a true innovative thinking through a series of international cooperation and practices. It’s noteworthy that this year’s topic, “Global Health Innovation”, is closely related to “ensuring the life health and living health of people of all ages”, the third point of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and is one of the major public concerns in the post-epidemic period.

Lecturer Allan Chou giving his speech

The first guest to speak was Ms. Shuman Liu, Co-founder and Chief Cultural Officer of STARFIELD, a leading plant-based meat brand in China. As an environmentalist, she shared the story of establishing STARFIELD, which provides plant-based meat that tastes exactly the same as real meat so that consumers’ behavioral cognition can be unconsciously influenced and their eating habits changed. And this can also profoundly affect conservation of water resources, biological conservation and alleviation of world hunger.

Ms. Shuman Liu sharing her story of brand establishment

The second guest to speak was Mr. Huazhang Xu, Founder of Joyberry, a new yoga apparel brand. He shared the determination process of the brand orientation with the attendees. This process “integrates product user portraits with user problems and develops new product concepts” so as to build emotional connections with users. Mr. Xu also showed some pictures of Joyberry products, and emphasized the significance of product sustainability. He mentioned that product sustainability doesn’t just come from the natural materials that are durable with no deformation, but is more about transferring the initial idea to users of being passionate towards life.

Mr. Huazhang Xu sharing the determination process of his brand orientation

The third guest was Dr. Gunjan Bhardwaj, Founder of Innoplexus, an AI platform for drug discovery and research renowned worldwide. He introduced the application background of Innoplexus. By promoting an innovative blockchain platform, the medical information and data are integrated and processed from being jumbled and closely connected into the knowledge map of the largest scale in medical industry. This map can help life science companies to evaluate drug feasibility more effectively. For example, Innoplexus made great contributions to the joint research and development of therapeutic drugs for COVID-19 in Europe.

Dr. Gunjan Bhardwaj introducing the application background of products

The last guest to share was Crusoe Zhang, Performance Management Director of NIKE. Crusoe talked about the source of NIKE’s innovative concepts, wishing to advocate exercising and help people who exercise gain constant improvement. He said innovation originates from actual needs of customers. According to different consumer behaviors, the market focus will also change. For example, depending on the social need of exercising consumers, NIKE has set up an online sports community where people can discuss sports equipment, acquire more professional exercise guidance, and enrich their interpersonal relationship by taking part in offline communication campaigns of the community.

Crusoe Zhang sharing the innovative concepts of NIKE

In the following round-table portion, students actively posed questions to the five guests upon the current situation of industrial development, the market strategies during startup, challenges encountered many other problems. The atmosphere was cheerful and lively.

The round-table stage

Day 2  Innovation Workshop

Having listened to the speeches of the first day, each team started to think about their own innovative orientation. To help students systematically grasp the method and logic of innovation and entrepreneurship, Lecturer Allan Chou taught students through an applied innovation workshop that gave students various thinking methods and practical techniques such as Design Thinking. The workshop contributed to building business logic and will help students get a better business start with well-designed innovation plans.

Day 3  Mentoring Session

In the middle of the competition, the mid-term test came, reviewed by Five entrepreneurial mentors from Joint Innovation Center of Amazon Web Services (AWS), namely Yan Shi, General Manager of Joint Innovation Center of AWS, Shuang Bai, Founder of Transflow, Emily Cheung, Founder of Shake to Win, Antony Chen, Founder of Protostar Education, and Jerry Wu, Founder of OAKARY. They listened carefully to the business plan presentations of each team, and offered many precious suggestions on the creativity, business modes, feasibility and presentation ways. They also made a preview of the final pitch to be carried out on the next day.

Day 4  Final Pitch

On the last day of ICC, 20 teams spent as long as three and a half hours on Final Pitch, and were scored and questioned by Michael Sung, Associate Professor of Practices at FISF, Jiasong Huang, Managing Director of Ansibao Investment, and Lecturer Allan Chou. Students’ innovation plans closely followed popular social issues, involving a wide range of events. Some teams noted the mental psychological pressure in modern society, and proposed to help people better control physical health by detecting emotional changes with smart devices; some teams concentrated on female health, wishing to design a brand of hygienic articles for menstruation that better understands females needs, costs less and is able to win the recognition and trust from female consumers. Other teams emphasized the significance of healthy living conditions to physical health, aiming to build the most comfortable living environment system by means of using a smart device and data analysis. Their creativity and wonderful performance were highly praised by the three judges.

Closing Ceremony

After the final pitch, ICC came to the closing ceremony. Charles Zhang, Deputy Dean of Academics and Professor of Finance at FISF, delivered a speech. He shared his reflection on career selection, and provided three considering factors: Ability, Importance and Motivation. He claimed that a person’s value should not be determined by the amount of money that he earns, but the importance of the position he holds, the value he creates for the world, and the motivation to maintain long-term development. He encouraged students to keep in contact with others acquainted during the ICC and march forward hand in hand in future study and development to find development directions suitable for themselves.

Professor Charles Zhang delivering his speech

The campaign came to a highlight at the awards ceremony. The judges and program teachers presented trophies and prizes for team awards and individual awards. In the end, the “Trending” team consisted of four students from Peking University, Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen), Sun Yat-sen University and Nankai University won the first prize with their innovative plan of helping manage the mood of depression with big data analysis and a smart wearable device. With the cloud group photo stage after the award-giving ceremony, the ICC campaign this time reached a successful conclusion.

After a quick four days, the cloud ICC came to an end. Let’s see how the competing students feel about the campaign!

It was an amazing opportunity to be a part of ICC2021. Despite it being virtual, it was very well organized and I was able to learn a lot from the speakers and mentors. It was also very interesting for me to learn from my peers, especially since I was not from China. I hope to be able to attend ICC in person one day!

——Dionne from National University of Singapore

Though the event was held online, I was immersed in each stage the teachers designed. In this four-day journey, the four of us on the team grew from complete strangers to full of tacit understanding of each other by the end. This is quite a marvelous experience. Notably, the mentoring session was a great help to me, enabling me to have a clearer understanding of the structure of the business plan and improve my business mind. I expect to see my friends again in real life in the future!

——Student Qiu from Peking University

There are so many good memories in ICC! What impresses me most is the excellent tutoring and wonderful teammates. All those panels, lectures have given us so many insights and helpful advice. People here all full of passion, energy, knowledge that really inspire me and demonstrate to me how business operates. I am also grateful to meet my teammates who share the same interest in business as well. A huge thank-you to ICC. Hopefully I’ll come back again some day!

——Student Jiang from Fudan University

ICC has been an incredible experience and it was such a pleasure to work with students around the world. I have definitely learned a lot from the experience and would recommend others participate in the program. A huge “thank you” to the ICC teams that made this event possible!

——Heidi from University of Melbourne

I'm so grateful that ICC gave me this chance to get in touch with innovation and entrepreneurship. From this activity, I realized that only innovative thinking is not enough. More important is the process to transform thoughts into actual products, as technology can only benefit human life and progress when it’s turned into fruits. This time we discussed global health problems. I have met with many collisions of ideas with many friends and thus broadened my vision. ICC will also influence my future study and life, bringing new thoughts and new directions. I will forever remember and cherish this experience.

Student Fan from Xi'an Jiaotong University

FISF EMF

At last, we’d like to express our sincere thanks to the following collaborators supporting us in this campaign (in no particular order)

Looking forward to see you in ICC 2022!