On August 24th 2024, the opening ceremony of the Global Entrepreneur Summer School (hereinafter referred to as GESS) was successfully held in Tongji University. The ceremony was attended by LIU Run, Deputy Secretary of Tongji University Party Committee, YIN Wen, Director of Tongji University Foreign Affairs Office, Professor SHI Qian, Secretary of Tongji SEM Party Committee, SUN Yujie, Deputy Secretary of Tongji University Youth League Committee (presiding), and DONG Bianlin, Deputy Secretary of Tongji SEM Party Committee.

LIU Run, Deputy Secretary of Tongji University Party Committee,  announced the opening. He warmly welcomed the 32 campers in attendance, welcoming them to Tongji University to participate in this event and looking forward to unleashing their creativity, exploring and enjoying the innovation journey. Afterwards, the guests on the spot started the holographic ball together, and GESS 2024 was officially opened.

Tongji University International Exchange and Cooperation Development Report

YIN Wen, Director of the Foreign Affairs Office of Tongji University, gave a report on the development of Tongji University’s international exchange and cooperation. He introduced to the Summer School participants the heritage, current situation and future vision of Tongji University in the field of international cooperation. He pointed out that Tongji University, a comprehensive university with a long history, has long attached great importance to opening up and cooperating with the outside world, has continuously innovated the mode of international exchange and cooperation, with record high enrolment, rich and diverse themes of international exchange and cooperation, and has formed an international cooperation network with Germany as the core, Europe as the focus, and radiating to the whole world. At the same time, he had high expectations for the campers, hoping that they could work together in a multicultural context and fully experience the clash of cultures and ideas, while contributing diversified and innovative power to solving global problems.

Professor SHI Qian, Secretary of Tongji SEM Party Committee emphasized the importance of innovation in all aspects in today’s educational and technological context, and the indispensability of effective communication in the innovation process, which ensures that the results of the research are of value in terms of their application, bridges the gap between research and its practical application, and contributes to new knowledge and solutions.

Statement by GESS Alumni Representative

Andres Hernandez, an alumnus of GESS Munich Class of 2023, inspired the participants with the spirit of social entrepreneurship and his own experiences to motivate the campers to seize the opportunities of the platform, actively exchange ideas, stimulate innovation and realise the vision of building a better world through business models.

The rules of admission, GESS values and precautions were announced to further deepen the campers’ awareness of rules and teamwork. The ice-breaking activities and coaches’ meeting were followed by various games and interactive sessions to get to know each other and build up initial friendships.

This year’s GESS will focus on four sub-themes: food, mobility, health and production/waste. The 32 participants will be divided into 6 groups, each group will be accompanied by a full-time coach, and the programme will be conducted through lectures, workshops, field research, roundtables, etc. to stimulate creativity, build business models and optimize strategic objectives, and finally present the solutions through project roadshows, so as to achieve the good vision of solving the problems of the world development era with business models.

Programme Background

The Global Entrepreneur Summer School is an initiative of the 4E Alliance (Technical University of Munich, Munich University of Applied Sciences, Munich Business School, Landshut University of Applied Sciences and Munich University of German Federal Armed Forces) and the Institute for Social Entrepreneurship (ISE) together with its partners, the Polytechnic University of Monterrey (Mexico), Tongji University (China) and LifeCo UnLtd (South Africa). Each year, GESS receives more than a thousand applications from all over the world and, after several rounds of selection, invites the best applicants to the camp.

This year’s Shanghai GESS was hosted by Tongji University and organised by Tongji SEM and Tongji Venture Valley. 32 campers were screened and invited from 9 countries, including Germany, Romania, Switzerland, Mexico and Turkey.