The 2nd International Symposium for Asian MOT Education (ISAME) 2021 has just been held on 1-2 September 2021. ISAME is a semiannual Asia Innovation Center (AIC) consortium meeting.
AIC members are management faculties from Asian universities, including the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB). The Management of Technology Laboratory (MoT Lab), School of Business and Management ITB, represented Indonesia. Malaysia was represented by Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM), Malaysia Japan Institute of Technology, and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Malaysia. In addition, Thailand was represented by Chiang Mai University (CMU) and Vietnam was represented by Da Nang University. The University of Kelaniya represented Sri Lanka and Yamaguchi University (YU) represented Japan.
The 2nd ISAME was held for two days. The first day was a symposium that was open to the public, and the second day was a limited discussion only for AIC members. Starting at 13.00 JST (Japan Standard Time), the first day was started with remarks from the AIC Director, Dean of YUMOT, and each representative from AIC member universities. Prof. Aurik Gustomo, Vice Dean of Academics of SBM ITB, on behalf of ITB, greets the audience and reports the current education condition in ITB in the opening session. The event then continued with two keynote speeches and discussions by each presenter.
The first keynote speech was entitled “Commercialization Management System for Creating University Ventures” by Yasuhisa Yamaguchi, the Executive Vice President of FFG Venture Business Partners, Ltd. Yamaguchi explained the commercialization management system in forming a university company by taking real examples from the START Program conducted by his company.
FFG Venture Business Partners is a venture capital company founded by Fukuoka Financial Group, which acts as a business promoter in the START Program. This program aims to commercialize high-potential and high-risk technology seeds developed by university researchers with the support of business promoters at the pre-venture stage.
“In this case, the business promoter connects the university/research institution with a business support network consisting of a tech/market research group, a business development group, and a license out-group,” said Yasuhisa.
He said that it was very difficult to develop technology companies at universities in Japan other than at Kyushu University in the pre-venture period. There was no business development division, so the existing technology did not have a clear business model. He said the toughest problem in developing business within the university was finding the right candidate for Chief Executive Officer (CEO).
The second keynote speech was presented from Canada by Alexandros Papaspyridis, Ph.D., the Higher Education Industry Director for the Asia Pacific Japan of Microsoft, titled “Reimagining computational education in Business Schools for Industry 4.0.” He talked about the changes in education during the Covid-19 pandemic, where the digital transformation in work and life occurred in just two months.
Papaspyridis said that higher education must use data analytics to make decisions, deliver curriculum digitally (hybrid or fully online), use digital courseware & virtual/augmented experience, have distance learning capabilities, increase skills, and make new collaboration models with industry and government. Paradigms in terms of finance, technology, and psychology will shift for a long time. Through its Microsoft Learn product with Azure for Students, Microsoft seeks to help universities produce students who have the technical expertise/skills needed in future jobs, including data analytics, machine learning, statistics, and probabilistic modeling. The most challenging thing for Papaspyridis is making universities aware of the changes they need and helping them take measures to do so.
The second day started with the activity update of each AIC member regarding the use of digital tools in learning programs and lectures related to data science in the Covid-19 era. It was followed by discussions about the current learning situation during the Covid-19 pandemic, plans, discussion on project proposals by Prof. Takahashi and Prof. Matsuura from Yamaguchi University.
Continued by introducing a virtual conference platform developed by ITB by Dr. Eko Agus Prasetio from MoTLab SBM-ITB, the event ended with a discussion on the next meeting and a closing statement from Prof. Matsuura from Yamaguchi University.
