Innovation in Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation: The Fourth Annual International Collidoscope Challenge Closes With Ideas That Matter

Release time：2022-01-21    

Ninety-six undergraduate students from 22 universities from around the World tackled “Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Innovation” as part of the 4th Annual International Collidoscope Challenge (ICC) organized by the Elite Master of Finance Program at Fudan University’s Fanhai International School of Finance (FISF) from January 15th to the 18th 2022.

The online competition focused on key issues related to Climate Change, the first year and second year student participants learned about the importance of carbon neutrality and brainstormed about possible solutions to global warming which are all part of the global engagement and cooperation among young people that is the hallmark of ICC, to also promote social responsibility among young people of today so they can develop clear objectives to help solve pressing global issues.

During the four days competition, 96 participants making up 24 teams went through icebreaking exercises, expert sharing, brainstorming, innovation workshop and other highly intensive program sessions.  The “ICCers” delivered their final project ideation and pitch presentation under the mentorship of industry experts from top FISF corporate partners.

The key deliverables for this year’s ICC are for the participants to come up with the most innovative ways to solve carbon emission under real life scenarios, and to also best prepare for any adverse changes that might affect our lives with Climate Change.

Let’s review this year’s ICC journey:

Day 1 - Opening
ICC kicked off with a message from Justin Hou, FISF EMF Program Director to really take in the experience of this very unique global program that brings university students together from all over the world to work on the main theme of managing our Climate Crises, and to fully demonstrate their innovative thinking to the highest level possible. 

The student participants then show their individual team videos to introduce themselves and their unique team names as part of the opening icebreaking session.

After the fun and festive icebreaking, Allan Chou the founder of RAIDiCal, a global early tech fund of funds and adjunct instructor of sustainability and corporate innovation at FISF gave the participants their official briefing on the ICC 2022 Challenge “Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Innovation” which is closely connected to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal Number 13 (Climate Action).  He hopes that the participants can develop the mindset needed to develop unique ideas in dealing with carbon reduction and the multitudes of issues that this planet is faced with due to Global Warming.

Keynote:
The keynote speaker for this year’s ICC is Denis Depoux, China MD, Deputy Head Asia, Deputy Chairman of Supervisory Board of Roland Berger (Germany), he shared his extensive experience in the energy sector internationally and as a top business consultant to provide insights and analysis of what Carbon Neutrality means to the World and China. He feels that eliminating carbon output presents many entrepreneurial and innovation opportunities, and what we need are immediate actions to tackle the global warming problems which is absolutely pressing and dire. 

Furthermore, the challenge to the consulting industry when it comes to providing the best business solutions to clients in balancing the demand for less carbon output and to retain healthy growth for their businesses.  The European and China experience on reaching carbon neutrality tells us that this is a real-world challenge that needs to be executed right away to great thought leadership in driving real action.

Presenting online from Munich, Professor Nedopil tells the participants that the problems presented by global warming are both challenges and opportunities, but must be supported by the right amount of investments and financial support.  

He feels strongly that the right government policy can accelerate the effectiveness of the innovative market forces to deliver the solutions needed in energy production which we must have to lower carbon emissions.

Industry Expert Sharing:
The first industry expert speaker is Jérôme Feutelais, the Founder/CEO of Epique (France), an energy usage optimization startup based in Shanghai, explaining how his startup collects critical data on industrial power usage then utilizes artificial intelligence with advance technology to optimize power consumption thereby reducing carbon emissions and saves overall operational cost.

The second industry expert speaker is Max Song, the founder of CarbonBase (Hong Kong), a climate tech startup leveraging data science and blockchain for enterprise solutions for measuring, managing and reducing carbon emissions.  Max gave several case studies of how his company was able to use proprietary AI and blockchain methodology to help corporations to come up with the best strategy to reach carbon neutrality, and he also explained to the participants how carbon credit works in China and presents potential business opportunities in the low carbon marketplace.

The third industry and final expert speaker is Juho Pättö, COO at the Caidio Group and its General Manager in China, Caidio is Finnish AI-startup, providing data-driven solutions for the quality assurance of concrete which ultimately help companies to cut costs, improve productivity and reduce CO2 emissions in the production process. Juho tells the participants that concrete production is the source of roughly 15% of all the CO2 emissions in China and 8% worldwide, with so much more construction projects being developed that it’s vital to eliminate carbon output of this very important industry to ensure that the country’s 2060 carbon neutral goals can be met on time.  He also gave example of how his company uses proprietary technology including cloud computing, IoT sensors and local weather forecasts to optimize the amount of water and necessary materials in concrete to ensure that the formula is maximized for strength and environmentally compliance. 

Round Table Discussions
Professor Nedopil and the three industry experts then participated in a round table discussion moderated by Allan Chou all centered on this year’s main theme of “Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Innovation.” The two online and two in-studio experts answered questions from the ICCers related to the innovation, commercialization, finance and how tech startups can fully develop great ideas into full blown businesses.  The discussions also included lively dialogue regarding corporate profitability and the demand for companies to become carbon neutral as part of their ESG commitments.

Day 2 - Innovation Workshop
After finishing the 1st day of industry insights and sharing, the teams are given time to think about the problem(s) that they would like to tackle to fulfill the ICC 2022 challenge of “Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Innovation” under the guidance of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 13 on Climate Action.

To help the teams to complete their ideation and start to organize their thoughts into a final project presentation deck, Allan Chou from RAIDiCal conducted an Innovation Workshop for the ICCers with important tools of the trade including Design Thinking, Strategic Thinking methodologies to optimize teamwork and to cover all the necessary tasks to manage their projects just like good startup founders.  

Day 3 - Mentorship Session
ICC organizers scheduled a mid-way check and mentorship sessions where the participating teams can test out their ideation and presentation layout so as to better prepare for the next day final pitch.

Five mentors including: Arielle Li, Senior Consultant at Roland Berger (China); Shaofang Liang, Project Manager at Roland Berger (China); Billy Chan, founder of DropChain (Singapore), a digital product management agency; Scofield Liang, head of operation management at the Drivery, a marketplace for mobility innovation; and David Chu, Delivery Lead for the Digital Acceleration Team at Bosch Global Emerging Markets listened to the team pitches and gave insightful recommendations to the teams to optimize their presentations and refine their vision on how best to present their ICC 2022 ideas.

Day 4 - Final Pitch
The last day of ICC culminated in 22 teams pitching their final ideas on “Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Innovation” with every ICCers having to pitch as part of their own team so there’s full participation in the “Silicon Valley Style” five-minute pitch, and a very concise two-minute question and answer session with the judges after each presentation.

The judges for this year’s ICC final pitch are:  Elaine Chen, General Manager,GR and Key Account, Honeywell Building Technology; Dr. Sam Lai, the technology and innovation lead at Logitech (China) Technology Co., Ltd.; and Allan Chou from RAIDiCal.

The teams presented ideas that were extremely board and diverse but very close to their lives with projects focusing on the distribution of soon-to-expired food from supermarkets to tracking of carbon footprint in 2nd hand automobiles using blockchain; and to the tracking of carbon footprint of family members so that individuals can keep an eye on their environmental impact real-time.

Along with the scoring from judges, ICC invited participants from previous competitions over the last three years and these at-large judges gave their scoring of the team presentations, but also selected the “Most Popular Team” award.

Closing Ceremony
After the very exciting final pitches from the participating teams, Dr. Charles Chang, Deputy Dean of Academics, Professor of Finance, Director of the Fintech Research Center at FISF gave the final closing remarks at this year’s ICC.

Professor Chang told the participants that climate change is one of the most difficult problems faced by human kind and as part of the new generation it’s important for all ICCers to set their own goals and think about how to create value for the world as part of the process to realize those objectives.

He hopes that through ICC participants can meet students of diverse background to work together to become this generation’s change makers.

And finally, the winning team from very competitive scoring by the professional industry judges, at-large judges and EMF program staff members that the winning team for the ICC 2022 is the “E to the Forth” team from Zhongshan University in Guangzhou China, which came up with the idea of using an APP to help local supermarkets to keep track and distribute soon-to-expired food products and help to distribute the items to needy families in the local neighborhoods.  Globally food waste consists of a third of the food produced and once organic food waste decomposes it creates a huge carbon pollution problem.

The ICC 2022 winning team “E to the Forth” will be given a chance as the winning prize to try out the XR Suite developed by HTC-Vive to realize the project that they have envisioned on a Metaverse level and beyond.

Participants Say

I think the organization and idea of it was very impressive and a lot of hard work has been put into it. Thanks for the opportunity!
——Nanyang Technological University, Teo Jia Yi

The lectures delivered by all those distinguished figures in your cast are more than inspiring and educational. Thanks a lot for offering us an opportunity to get exposed to some of fullest front information concerned with a futuristic topic!
——Peking University, Mr. Yu

It was an amazing experience to been in the ICC 2022, as of all our team members are from science courses, we are truly grateful and impressed by the performances of all teams. It was a great experience to learn more about business proposal and pitching skills. Thank you, ICC!
——Fudan University, Ms. Fang

Through this competition, I not only had a deeper understanding of global climate change issues and the goal of carbon neutrality, but also got to know many excellent students and judges. I benefited a lot from their wonderful speeches and excellent presentations.

——Xiamen University, Ms.Wang

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