Center for Global Entrepreneurship @ SUNY Korea
Achievements to date
Since launching in August 2017, the Center for Global Entrepreneurship at SUNY Stonybrook's Korea campus has launched a variety of programming:
(1) The Global Growth Supporters program, where faculty and undergraduate students offer consulting services to area startups;
(2) The Foreign University-linked Startup Support program, where faculty and entrepreneurs give workshops and pitch training to funded startups;
(3) Startup Weekend (in partnership with Techstars). November 2017 theme was "Educational Technology." June 2018 theme was "Fashion Innovation." June 2019 theme was "Sustainable Fashion Innovation."
(4) Business "Beautiful Mind Speaker" Series, where guest speakers give talks about industry and leadership experiences;
(5) MOES, or "Monthly Ongoing Entrepreneurship Symposium," where SUNY Korea students pitch their ideas to each other during monthly closed-door luncheons;
(6) Internship matching program connecting SUNY Korea students to work at local startups.
(7) a 3-day Business Idea Camp for all IGC students in November 2018, designed and delivered from a $18,000 government grant.
(8) The 2020 Global Product·Service Localization Research Group, a faculty-student consulting team recruited by the Incheon Technopark to help Korean professional startups to expand in mainland China.
(9) Welcomed Port's co-founder for a guest talk to students
(10) Spring 2021 Project Expo, open to all SUNY Korea students
Mission
The mission of the Center is to offer all SUNY Korea students and faculty a “networking point” with both global and local entrepreneurship communities, as well as a set of in-house programs ranging from ideation hackathons to workshops on sales/negotiation and business modeling to mentorship opportunities. The primary metric for the Center will be the support for incubation of student startup companies at SUNY Korea.
Short- and long-term activities and objectives
In the short-term (within ~2 years), the Center will:
- offer access to a social-professional network covering both USA and Europe
- offer human resources support in the form of mentors and subject matter experts
- co-develop programs with major accelerators, VC’s and similar agencies (i.e. K-Startup, Yozma Group, Startup Alliance, Born2Global, Creative Korea, Seoul Global Startup Center) from the Seoul/Incheon area
- help students to get internships at startup companies
- field student teams to participate in national and inter’l startup and business plan competitions
- offer legal resources & accounting assistance
- accommodate SBU students who would like to scout resources in Korea
- offer entrepreneurship or innovation-oriented consulting and student-staffing services for local institutions
In the long run (beyond ~4 years), we plan for offering a full incubation program; coordinating a minor open to all SUNY Korea students; and partnering with the other IGC universities to offer programming to all IGC students.
Funding and Resource needs
Currently, we continue to seek funding from government and government-sponsored sources. (The “Western” model of corporate sponsorship for Entrepreneurship Centers is very difficult to sell here in Korea.) We are also looking to secure a Google-like ideation lab & breakout room space here.
Staffing
Chihmao Hsieh, Research Professor in the Business Management Department, serves as Director (BS Mechanical Engineering 1997, MS Industrial Engineering 1998 both at University of Michigan-Ann Arbor; PhD Business WUSTL). He has served as Coordinator of Entrepreneurship Curricula at the University of Missouri (2006-2010) and University of Amsterdam (2010-2014), and as chair of Yonsei’s Creative Technology Management department (2014-2017). He is thus well-versed in the entrepreneurship curriculum and educational culture for entrepreneurship on 3 continents.
Prof. Seungwook Kim is also leading in guiding the Center. Since Summer 2017 he has been working to find national funding sources, talking to various agencies in Incheon and Gyeonggi. He has set up a strong relationship with Incheon Techno Park, which is willing to support KRW 25mn around Fall 2017 for the Center. Larger funding amounts may come in subsequent years. We hope for university-wide support for fundraising.
Currently there are no student assistants allocated for the Center.
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