A delegation of HKUST students and alumnus attended the Asia-Pacific Youth Innovation & Entrepreneurship (YIE) Forum held in Taiwan in Oct 2018 when they met with experienced entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs-to-be from 16 Asia-Pacific economies including America, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong SAR, Taiwan, Thailand, etc to exchange ideas and latest development in the transfer and development of knowledge, skills and technical know-how. Topics covered range from the most needed and transformative sectors of the digital economy to female entrepreneurship and gender inclusion. Experience shared during the workshop would further facilitate both internal and regional replicability through dissemination of acquired skills within the participants’ home economies and other regional sectors.

 

“I am particularly impressed by the enthusiasm and passion of our students and alumnus in enriching their understanding in the entrepreneurship ecosystems and preparing themselves for their entrepreneurial journey and development. We are proud to be able to identify and support them for attending this Forum which does not only provide useful opportunities to share but also opportunities to work together for the better future of the world” said Donny Siu, Associate Director of Entrepreneurship Center and Head of the Office of Dean of Students, HKUST.

 

See what the participants said:

John Ngai CHEUNG (TLE)

“This is the most amazing forum that I have participated ever. Not only because of the content of the forum itself but also the cultural that we exchange. This multicultural forum gave us an experience of navigating startup ecosystem in different countries and allow us to get into different startup zones in the future.”

In this two days forum, the most impressive thing is startups that the Taiwanese makes. Most of them are cultural and education projects which are quite different from Hong Kong. I remember one of the startup is making a child education tool to let children instead of using phone to learn different animal, they use puzzles and some fluorescent material to draw children attention. This is quite a fun project and can train up a children to learn more knowledge in a natural and fun way.

Another thing that impressed me the most was the startup ecosystem that provided by the Taiwan government. Which is very willing to cooperate with the research lab around the world and help them to make a startup in Taiwan. Taiwan provides a special type of entrepreneur VISA that allows people around the world to start a business. That is very friendly for people who love Taiwan cultural and it would be an easy step to move forward.

Overall, It was a nice forum that i learnt a lot about Taiwan startup ecosystem and it is a nice experience for me to talk with some venture capital fund bosses about my startup idea. This gives me different ideas and thoughts about starting a startup in different cities.”

 

Anthony Man Yu LAM, TLE

“This trip is an excellent multi-cultural opportunity. Participants of this conference are from multiple-Pacific nations, including Vietnamese, Malaysian, Japanese, Indian... Most of them are enthusiastic entrepreneurs. I have many valuable conversations with them. We have exchanged a lot and understood more about each other cultures, languages, and policies.

Knowing more of their culture is hugely critical. As an entrepreneur, we have lots of chances to travel or extend our business to other regions, especially our neighbouring areas. Knowing more could prevent us to be in an impolite or rude position when dealing with people in there. Moreover, by having more understanding of their policies, we could know more about the resources available there.

Moreover, I have learned more about Taiwan’s entrepreneurial environment. It was entirely different comparing with Hong Kong or China. For entrepreneurs in Hong Kong, we are intensely focusing on technology and science, for example, Fintech, E-commerce, health technology... However, Taiwanese are more concentrated on cultural entrepreneurship. We have visited the start-up booths designed by Taiwan university students. There are many interesting products. Some of them are beautiful hand-crafted products and some are broad games that support the minority groups”