Young innovators unite to plan the cultivation of advanced creativity

A federation of young innovators was set up yesterday after a roundtable summit of the Pujiang Innovation Forum.

It plans to cooperate with the media and investors to connect more young groups working on science and technology, and form a social network. 

It will serve as a platform for the young researchers to reveal their scientific results to the public and attract companies to convert these results into reality. It will also promote communication between members. 

More than 20 young scientists from all over the world sat down with 10 deans or headmasters to talk about how to inspire more youth entrepreneurs and to make Shanghai a hotbed of cutting-edge technological innovation.

Chu Junhao, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Shanghai Daily that we should give young talented people a relaxed environment to inspire their creation, and also allow them to do research on what they are interested in. 

He believed the city should also work on both introducing talent from overseas and cultivating local talent.

 “When it reaches a certain stage, the cultivation of domestic talents turns to be more important,” said Chu. 

Nie Honglin, a scientist and also the founder of local Ezisurg Medical Co added: “China is not short for innovative talents, but enterprises that encourage innovation. 

“Many young people who have a higher education have to humbly go to companies with excess capacity. The owners of such enterprises lack awareness of innovation, let along cultivating or encouraging the employees to do so.”

Adilson E. Motter of Northwestern University in Illinois said: “In the future science and technology will change faster and faster, and this means that we will have to adapt faster and faster to new realities to work effectively in these fields. 

“In particular, entire areas of research will be created and disappear over increasingly short time scales. So, people will need to develop the flexibility to reinvent themselves; otherwise they might become obsolete. 

“This was not much of an issue in the past because things were moving slow enough, but will most certainly be an issue in the future.”

He suggested that young innovators should develop an interest in continuous learning.

Vittoria Colizza, Senior Research Scientist at the Inserm, Pierre Louis Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health said such cultivation would be really great for younger generations for they can meet entrepreneurial or innovative people similar to their age which might spark the ideas embedded deeply inside their minds. 

Given enough time, the younger generation as a whole will have a fundamental change.