IGERT student Todd Alexander’s synopsis of the innovation and entrepreneurship event he recently attended:
One entrepreneurial event I attended was put on by the MIT-China Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum (MIT-Chief). It was a weekend long event focused on the Big Data revolution. The days were broken up into a morning session held by a handful of keynote speakers who talked about various topics including US Chinese relations and of course the central theme, big data. In the afternoon there were two sets of two separate talks and attendees could choose which talks they would like to attend. The talks were lecture style with opportunities to ask questions to the panel at the end. I went with friend Tim who is very interested in entrepreneurship. His hometown is about 4 hours from Shanghai and his family owns a successful business. Even though he is not here for a business degree he is very interested in business topics and invited me to attend the conference with him. Many of the speakers were world renowned professors as well as entrepreneurs and representatives from investment firms. Many of the speakers were from China. It gave them a different perspective which was interesting to hear. From what I gathered it seems like there is a lot of innovation and entrepreneurial activity in the big data field. This included how to analyze the information, how it can best be used, and how the data can be stored and organized.
One of the speakers was the chairman of one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in China KYXH Pharmaceuticals. He talked about the “5 Genes of Outstanding Cooperation”. They were as follows: common vision and goals, creativity and flexibility, operation and management skills, clear positioning and core competence, leadership decisiveness and execution. One of the things that struck me was the importance he placed on common vision and goals. This has been a reoccurring theme in the technology commercialization course I took and has been strongly emphasized. Case after case the companies with a clear vision have more success than those who don’t. It was also interesting he called it the 5 Genes of Outstanding Cooperation’s. Some of the ideas mirrored the ideas held in the 5 Disciplines for Creating what Customers Wants which was required reading for the IGERT program. One similar idea was that of organizational alignment which is what I think he meant by common vision and goals and leadership. It was interesting how many parallels I could draw between course materials and what was discussed.
I found one of the more interesting talks was the one held by the Venture Investment Panel. Two of the panelists were from larger venture firms, one was from a smaller venture firm, and one was an Adjunct Professor involved in the capital investment field. It was interesting to see the difference of strategy of the big firms compared to the smaller one in terms of size of companies they were looking for, the aversions to risk, and ways that they helped nurture the companies. It made me think about whom to go to when looking for investment. Certain investors offer different advantages such as more capital available, different types of support (some more personal, some more distant), as well as various other benefits such as contacts etc. This obviously depends on what stage your company is what your technology or service is etc. but it was interesting to see how a decision of how and where to get money from has an impact.
Overall I enjoyed the conference but I felt the same way my buddy Tim did in that there was not really enough time for networking. For those who purchased the VIP Package this was a little different and networking was built into the schedule in the form of dinner’s and other events. Overall the experience was enjoyable and worthwhile.
