The “2011 Project”, also called “The Enhancement Project of Innovation Ability in Institutions of Higher Education”, is the third national project of China’s higher education system following the “985 Project” and the “211 Project”. It aims to enhance comprehensive innovation ability in the fields of talents, disciplines and scientific research. By forming four types of collaborative innovation facing the great demand of frontier science, cultural inheritance, industrial and regional development, this project aims to deepen the reform of mechanism and system in colleges and universities, and to change the ways of their innovation, this project helps these institutes establish world-class programmes. This strategic project was officially launched on May 7^th, 2012.

Since the implementation of this project, our university has piloted a number of collaborative innovation centres as special regions for mechanism and system reform, “prior to carry and try” and has successively introduced a series of collaborative innovation management methods concerning personnel, finance, scientific research organizations, postgraduate training and resource allocation, etc. In April 2013, the Ministry of Education announced the first list in “2011 Plan”. WHU is the main collaborative unit in “Collaborative Innovation Centre of Judicial Civilization”. In October, 2014, “Collaborative Innovation Centre for Territorial Sovereignty and Maritime Rights” and “Collaborative Innovation Centre of Geospatial Technology” led by our university were selected as “2011 Collaborative Innovation Centre” in 2014.