Shanghai founds entrepreneurial training center

Shanghai has founded the city's first school for entrepreneurship training as part of its effort to build itself into a scientific innovation hub with global influence.

Shanghai Entrepreneurship School, established on Tuesday by the Shanghai Technology Innovation Center and Shanghai Institute of Technology, aims to provide people who have business plans with the best resources, both theoretical and practical, in the city.

"One aim of the school is to promote a model of entrepreneurial education, which combines theory and practice rather than simply focusing on the former, and hopefully explore an approach to entrepreneurial education that can be replicated and promoted elsewhere," said Lu Min, a chief engineer at the Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Commission.

By tapping into the Shanghai Institute of Technology's rich academic resources and the Shanghai Technology Innovation Center's up-to-date business experience, the school looks to offer systematic training programs regarding innovation and entrepreneurship for startups at different phases.

The programs will also include investment and financing resources and content about laws and regulations.

The school will set up training bases at many of the city's 600 business incubators and technology parks.

Availing itself of the Shanghai Institute of Technology's networking with foreign schools, the school will also offer students international training opportunities and short-term overseas study tours to enhance global vision, the school said.

Different courses will be introduced to university students who have business plans, startups at the initial stage, high-growth medium-sized and small enterprises, and those who are already performing strongly in the market, the school said.

The school will also introduce training courses for senior managers at incubators, technical brokers and technology transfer professionals.

"It's an effort to provide high quality service for startups with first-class vision of the entire innovation chain to better facilitate the high quality development of Shanghai's technological innovation and entrepreneurship," Lu said.

He said that technology-related entrepreneurship training occurs either at universities and colleges mainly through lectures by university teachers or at incubators and technology parks mainly through experience shared by business leaders and startups.

"But such a way of training usually separates theory from practice. For example, startups usually share from the perspective of separated single cases, so the content may end up fragmented and participants may find it hard to obtain systematic information," he said.

Chang Yan, general manager of Shanghai Innostar Biotech, a new drug safety evaluation and research center, said that the company is at a critical stage of strategic development. Chang, who will participate in a training course for startups that are already performing well, said that the center hopes to gain a deeper understanding of the country's and city's science and technology innovation policies and become more familiar with knowledge of the capital market through the course.

"We want to further enhance the companies' innovative capability and look forward to seeing more enterprises from the course be listed on the science and technology innovation board in the near future," she added.