CHINA ACCELERATOR visits ZJU GEP @HANGZHOU

On 23 March 2016, budding entrepreneurs of the Global Entrepreneurship Program, Hangzhou, (GEP) and The China Accelerator, Shanghai, jointly organised a four-hour entrepreneurial workshop in Zhejiang University.

After a quick introduction of China Accelerator and what they do, entrepreneurs of the Accelerator and GEP quickly gave their elevator pitches, highlighting what the problem was, their solution and also the value proposition.

With the arrival of pizza and soft drinks the participants were divided into teams of 12, each of which took part in the ‘Marshmallow Challenge’ in which teams were tasked to build the tallest structure using spaghetti sticks, string, tape and a marshmallow. After a lot of brainstorming fun, Todd Embley the program director at the China Accelerator went on to reveal some underlying principles and lessons from the Marshmallow challenge and its importance for entrepreneurs.

Soon afterwards the teams were given parameters and sixty minutes to develop an idea and pitch using a provided PowerPoint template. Ideas ranged from a drone retrieving deer in New Zealand to solve problems for deer farmers, to iOS applications made for 12-21 year olds in Singapore. After all the pitches, William Bao Bean the managing director of the China Accelerator gave prizes to the top three teams, and a group picture was taken to commemorate the event.

(GEP 2015 ZHU Zhangjie)