Innovate 2005: Adventures in Asia PDF Print E-mail
By Sanda Lefteriu and Paul Woebkenberg   
Wednesday, 04 May 2005


The following is a reflection by two IUB students of their experience in Japan and Singapore at the "Innovate 2005" conference. The students were sponsored by the Office of Career Services and Exchange Programs to represent IUB at this highly international event.
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Now it is about one month since our flight to Singapore. We left on a mission to represent IUB at “Innovate 2005� - an international conference for both undergraduate and graduate students, initiated by Rice University, IAESTE and some other universities in the US, Japan and Singapore.

The itinerary for the conference contained much activity for the coming week, which we would spend visiting many different companies, listening to talks, asking questions and talking to company and government representatives in the two countries of Singapore and Japan.

The first obstacle on our mission was the loss of our luggage on the way to Singapore. Due to this setback, our formal dress at the opening dinner on the first evening had to be improvised with borrowed clothes.

For both of us, it was the first time in Asia, which made the trip even more of an adventure. The conference started slowly with one day reserved for sightseeing in Singapore. This city is definitely worth visiting. We saw a few really old monuments in a very modern, clean, lively and green city with a mix of the Chinese, Indian and Malayan cultures, warm weather and interesting food. The latter generally had to be eaten without knifes and only sometimes forks were available. Nevertheless, we had enough time to practice eating with chopsticks.

Sightseeing in Singapore

On the next day, Monday, the official program started with a visit by Tech Semiconductor and Micron, the second largest DRAM producer worldwide.

All the visits were structured similarly, consisting of a visit to the production or research facilities and a few talks about the company’s development, goals and its role in the country. Afterwards our group, which consisted of about 55 students from all over the world and about 8 advisors, was given time to ask questions.

The overall theme of the conference was the role of technology and leadership in globalisation. The company visits and the talks by government representatives were related to this topic, with particular emphasis on Singapore’s development during the past 50 years. Singapore’s economy has been strategically planned since the 1950s. This is evident as the attraction of multinational companies and facilitation in their direct investment by government agencies played an important role for the extremely fast economic growth of this city-state of 4 million inhabitants.

In this context we also visited the entrepreneurship and business incubator of the National University Singapore, the Singaporean pharmaceutical company Biolynk, and the Singaporean fertilizer trading company Zagro.

At all visits we had opportunity to talk to the company representatives in person, ask questions, answer questions about our university and last, but not least, exchange contacts.

The Merlion â€' The Symbol of Singapore

After a short night for some of us, the entire group left the hotel at 4 am on Wednesday morning to fly to Tokyo, Japan, where the second half of the conference took place.

Tokyo is an impressive world city. It is very industrial in certain places, has large harbour areas and the inner city is filled with people, advertisements on huge TV screens, clubs and restaurants. The schedule was just as packed as in Singapore.

Our most important visits were to the Toyota-city Nagoya and NTT DoCoMo. In both visits we experienced a lot of Japan’s innovative research on automotive and telecommunication technologies. Afterwards, in a combined talk with NTT DoCoMo, Texas Instruments and NEC, we heard about the development of their products and their marketing in Japan, US and Europe.

For Friday, a Karaoke evening was planned. We could never have imagined that Karaoke could be that much fun, but in Japan this is a very popular nightlife activity.

The conference ended on Saturday with a little bit of sightseeing in and around Tokyo, which was organized by the participating Japanese students.

On Sunday we left Japan to return to Germany, after one week of exciting new experiences, a lot of fun and a lot of rice. We both made contact with a lot of new people and we felt that our representation of IUB in this conference was fruitful both for us and for IUB. We hope that IUB decides to participate in the conference again next year. In which case, we would strongly recommend for everybody to apply for participation. It is definitely a once in a lifetime experience!
 
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