On May 15, the second public lectures of East China Normal University MEM and the admission illustration meeting, hosted by ECNU Shanghai International School of Chief Technology Officer (hereinafter referred to as “CTO School”) and co-organized by Shanghai Lingang Caohejing Talent Co., Ltd., Shanghai Minhang District Committee Chunshen Pyramid Talent College, Shanghai Pudong New Area Talent Market and China-Israel (Shanghai) Innovation Park, was smoothly held through livestreams.
Prof. He Jiaxun, Executive Dean of CTO School, and Ding Min, Chair Professor of Smeal college of Business of the Pennsylvania State University, USA, , and Specially Appointed Professor of International Courses at CTO School , delivered lectures on the theme of “Innovative Thinking, Senior Executive Pattern and Career Advancement” successively. The event livestream had logged 1,500 views.
At the beginning of the event, Prof. He Jiaxun, Executive Dean of CTO School, gave a lecture on the theme of “Senior Management Perspective and CTO Degree Education.” Founded under the leadership of Prof. Qian Xuhong, President of ECNU and Chairman of CTO School Council, CTO School initiated CTO degree education program in the world, said Prof. He. Traditionally, the world's top universities, such as University of California at Berkeley and the Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania, have only short-term CTO executive education. The school pioneered CTO degree education, established the T3 pyramid excellent education logic and unique “4+X” curriculum system, aiming to train future CTO talents in the master program of ECNU MEM.
Prof. He Jiaxun made a detailed interpretation of the underlying T3 excellent education logic behind the CTO degree education innovation and emphasized the importance of the talent training concept of integrating the “entrepreneur spirit” and “scientist spirit.” Prof. He introduced that the chief technology officer (CTO) is responsible for linking technology with strategy, market issues and highest management standards and facilitating the intersection of innovation, research and development and leadership visions. Different from the traditional definition of the CTO as the top-level executive in charge of the company's technical affairs, now the members of the top management team (TMT) need to pay more attention to the coordination between the technical vision and the company's strategy, the coordination between technology decomposition and integration and the coordination between the technical and management functions. In other words, the current CTO is a fusion of technology, strategy, management and innovative leadership.
Prof. He Jiaxun especially elaborated that the cultivation of a Senior Management Perspective should be stressed for the career development of managers, including values and sense of mission, management thinking and reference coordinate. Finally, Prof. He Jiaxun summarized the training objectives of the program with the five-star model of CTO promotion, including Inspire Mission, Change Thinking, Enhance Expertise, Strengthen Innovative Leadership and Shape Globalization.
Next, Prof. Ding Min, invited by the CTO School, gave a demonstration lecture on “Innovative Thinking and Logical Innovative Methods.” This course is the foundation course of the CTO degree program. Prof. Ding Min discussed the question “Is innovation an art or a science? Prof. Ding Min believes that innovation should be a scientific subject and one that can be taught, learned and carried forward. Logical Creative Thinking is exactly the applicable toolbox for innovating the subject. Prof. Ding introduced the definition of logical creative thinking method, which regards innovation as a search rather than creation and innovators as explorers rather than inventors. It helps users discover new, less obvious and valuable solutions through its own set of logical search methods. In other words, Prof. Ding sees innovation as a search issue rather than an invention issue, which are reflected in three ways: First, everything that will be “invented” in the future already exists in theory, but has not yet (but sooner or later) been discovered. Second, the task of innovation is to use efficient, logic-based search methods to find solutions that are valuable to us in this vast theoretical space. Third, inventors didn't invent things that only they could invent. They just discovered them earlier than others (you). Therefore, innovators are explorers, not inventors, which gives everyone the opportunity to innovate and learn to greatly improve their self-innovation ability.
Second, Prof. Ding Min compared magic with logical thinking innovation. When it comes to magic, people think that the magician completes the impossible, but in fact, behind the scenes each magician completes the entire performance according to a precise and highly logical set of steps. Therefore, it is thought that innovation is similar to a magic process in logical creative thinking, the results of innovation make people feel very valuable and beyond expectation and innovation also needs a set of logical steps and methods that can be learned and mastered like magic.
In addition, targeting the specific innovative methods, prof. Ding Min mainly introduced the subtraction method and the causation method in the endogenetic method in the open class.
The subtraction method refers to the reduction of a certain attribute or quantity of one or more elements to observe whether or not a valuable new scheme will be produced. Subtraction can be considered in the three general directions of core, scale and scope. Prof. Ding Min elaborates on the core direction, which includes pure core, only core and partial core. The pure core refers to thinking from a starting point about whether or not innovation can be created by removing elements that consumers don't want, such as decaffeinated coffee, colorless tea drinks, etc. The only core means only keeping the most core elements for products, removing all non-critical parts. For example, Southwest Airline retains only the most basic passenger transportation service from point A to point B, while eliminating non-core elements such as in-flight service and fixed seating service. IKEA put the core in the sale of home furnishing and eliminated other non-core parts such as assembly. A partial core is the deletion of the original core. For car advertising, for example, the core of advertising content in the traditional sense includes cars, passengers and the car driving scene and that there was an influential creative advertising that removed the core content (car) in the advertisement to improve the advertising originality and attractiveness and it emphasized the concept that compared to products, the brand paid more attention to consumers.
The causality method refers to changing the functional relationships between elements at the starting point and between elements and external factors to observe whether or not valuable new solutions can be produced. This method needs to consider three factors first, including provider factors (such as the screen of the phone, camera, etc.), user factors (such as the palm size of the phone user, etc.) and third-party factors (such as the external temperature and humidity of the phone, etc.). Second, select potential factors to establish functional relationships, all of which may have valuable innovations. For example, from the perspective of the provider factor, the brand establishes a connection between the external decoration of the mug and the liquid temperature in the cup. From the perspective of third-party factors, the setting of Happy Hour in the bar establishes a connection between price and time period. A Spanish subsidiary of Coca-Cola established a connection between the price of lemon juice in vending machines and outdoor temperature.
The MEM open class of the ECNU lasted nearly two hours and the participating teachers and students gained a lot. The public lectures drew to a successful conclusion.