On May 23, 2016, the first forum “Innovation Development﹒Maker﹒Crowd innovating” was held at Economics and Management School, WHU. The forum was a dissertation proposal meeting for a major project led by Prof. Liyanping, Associate Dean of the Economics and Management School, under the title “Maker Role in the Chinese Innovation Driven Development and Strategic Research for Crowd innovating Incubation” which was funded by the National Social Science. The forum was hosted by the Research Center for China.Industry-University-Research Institute, which works in collaboration with Wuhan University.

Vice Chair of the University Council, Huang Taiyan and Executive Dean of the School Pan Min were invited for the opening ceremony. “The forum itself is an innovation” said Prof. Huang Taiyan. He believed that the forum will play a crucial role for talent cultivation, research and social service and help to promote the theoretical and practice development of Chinese Makers and Crowd innovating. Prof Panmin gave a briefing of the school research achievements, and expressed his sincere appreciation for all their long-term support and concern for the school’s development.

There were 14 researchers, scholars, executives and government officials engaged in an unprecedented brainstorming session about the Chinese innovation and entrepreneurship development. They shared insights, experiences and ideas about crowd innovation maker education and crowd innovating incubation; the features of the grassroots maker and elite maker; entrepreneur education and maker education; transformation and upgrading of high-tech enterprise incubators and high-tech innovation platform, and much more.

"Our project focuses on the frontier research and trending topics of Chinese innovation and entrepreneurship development, we truly hope that we could build a very good platform for stimulating  ideas of the Chinese Maker education  and Crowd innovating incubation, ” said Prof. Liyanping at the closing ceremony.

(Edited by Mark & Hu Sijia)