On January 20, a total of 40 Fudan MBA students arrived in Tel Aviv, Israel’s second largest city, to begin their overseas program in the “Innovation Nation”. During the 6 days’ program themed “Strategic Mindset and Innovation”, professors at the Tel Aviv University walked the visiting students through the nation’s history, culture, as well as economics and politics. The university invited startup entrepreneurs, investors and influencers to share their insights on innovation and entrepreneurship. Apart from lectures and seminars, the students also went on a number of industrial visits to local innovative companies, aiming to provide them a practical perspective.
“Israel’s spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship is very impressive”
Group 1 (Yufan Xu, Yanhua Cao, Yuhua Chen, Enkh-Erdene Bayarsaikhan, Sara Belen Vaca De La Torre, Chong Zhou): “Israel’s spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship is very impressive. The country has incontrovertibly become a nation of innovation and entrepreneurship. Israel is leading the way globally in terms of entrepreneurial activity rate, per capita entrepreneurship and successful entrepreneur rate.”
“Israel’s adversity gives rise to innovation”
Group 2 (Lan Wang, Weiqi Zhu, Yubo Chen, Jie Shen, Yifeng Wang, Sheng Tang): “Innovation is to break conventional behavior and mindset, and to challenge authority and old customs. Rooted in such a culture and constrained by its outer environment, adversity gives rise to a desire for change and all sorts of innovation come into being.”
“Israelis admirable for making the most of their intelligence, keeping innovating”
Group 3 (Wenbin Zhang, Jianfeng Wu, Xinfeng Yu, Huanan Wu, Rongping Zhang, Pin Fang, Zhaohui Shang, Zhanyu Liu): “We admire the spirit of Israelis to live in a survival mode and make the most advantage of their intelligence to keep innovating and get beyond the conventional wisdom. And this is also the reason why they can be so good at making things happen from zero to one, which is exactly what Chinese yet to learn.”
“Israelis’ power of execution worth learning”
Group 4 (Wei Zhou, Yan Liu, Ling Yue, Huayuan Xu, Han Du, Birong Yu, Jiawei Xu): “The perspective of Israeli geopolitical hastening innovation has been impressive. The Israelis’ mindset of turning crisis into opportunities is somewhat similar to the Taoist philosophy that misfortune might be a blessing in disguise. Their power of execution is also worth thinking about and learning.”
“A great integration of classroom teaching and industrial visits”
Group 5 (Jiajing Zheng, Liang Hong, Jinyu Zhang, Min Jiang, Guobin Zhang, Ziqing Ye, Xiqi Wang): “The program consolidates not only business theory analysis and case sharing, but also a lot of industrial visits to high-tech companies like Intel, incubators, as well as companies that are focusing on modern agricultural irrigation technology. It well integrates classroom teaching into practical company operations and management, which helps us really understand the meaning of management.”
“Openness, tolerance, modernization drive innovation”
Group 6 (Meijiao Ning, Yinxiang Zuo, Ye Xu, Xin Tu, Shijie Dong, Shaocheng Han): “At present, Israel's education system is divided into different tracks based on religious and scientific studies. It provides religious education for ultra-Orthodox Jews and scientific education for secular Jews. It is because of the nation’s openness, tolerance and modernization that Israel has been leading the way in scientific innovation globally.”