Info Session on VGU's PhD Scholarships in Germany

On 19 September 2015, at MOET Building in HCMC, we organized the Info Session on the PhD Scholarships in Germany - Training for VGU's Future Lecturers, funded by State Budget.

 The 911 Program provides full-time PhD scholarships in Germany for candidates who would like to become VGU’s future’s lecturers. The scholarships cover all fees relating to the courses, living costs, health insurance, travel cost, passport and visa fees, and one return air ticket.

At the event, President of VGU, Prof. Juergen Mallon gave an introduction on VGU as the 1st New Model University project in Vietnam focusing sustainable high-tech engineering, a joint project of Vietnam & Germany with research oriented education and academic support from 36 German universities. The President also expressed the benefits of being a lecturer at VGU and the need of 120 lectures in the future of VGU, where it would be planned for 5000 students with 23 study programs.   

We were lucky to have two special guests from Germany at the Infosession, thanks to their visits for the GCSM conference, Prof. Reiner Anderl and Prof. Rainer Stark. Prof. Reiner Anderl, Vice President of TU Darmstadt and Chairman of the VGU Consortium presented about reasons to do PhD in Germany and research opportunities through collaborative research centers, graduate school projects and research clusters. He also emphasized the German procedure for achieving a Doctoral graduation, which are to provide scientific research self responsibly, to prove the ability of performing self-dependent research, to develop the ability to defend the own scientific results achieved. Prof. Rainer Stark, Director of the Chair for Industrial Information Technology from TU Berlin then gave an example of joint research at the Collaborative Research Center in TU Berlin.

An overview on 911 Program at VGU was given by Dr. Nguyen Le Hung, Vice President of VGU. The application process was briefly presented with further instruction document given later by email to the participants (which is also available at VGU’s website).

The Q&A session was quite dynamic. Participants would like to know more about VGU Consortium, the German universities supporting VGU and study programs at these universities.

Following up this event, 3 consultant sessions will be held at VGU campus in HCMC on Saturdays of October 17, November 21 and December 19, 2015) for those interested.

Based on the current and future Academic Planning, VGU recruits PhD candidates in these following fields:

• Architect
• Environmental & Process Engineering
• Industrial Engineering & Technology Management
• Health Management
• IT Security
• Electrical Engineering & IT
• Computer Science
• Mechatronics & Sensor Systems
• Mechanical Engineering
• Computational Engineering
• Civil Engineering
• Global Production Engineering and Management
• Sustainable Urban Development
• Traffic, Transport and Logistics
• Finance & Accounting
• Business Administration
• Economics
• Business Information Systems

See more information on the application procedure at this link (in Vietnamese):
http://www.vgu.edu.vn/fileadmin/pictures/studies/20150810-VGU911PhDScholarship2015_VN.docx

Following are all the presentations on the Info Session:

VGU - The Vietnamese - German University by Prof. Juergen Mallon - President of VGU

Doctoral Graduation Procedure in Germany by Prof. Reiner Anderl - VGU Consortium Chairman and Vice President of TU Darmstadt

The Collaborative Research Center at TU Berlin by Prof. Rainer Stark - Director of the Chair for Industrial Information Technology, TU Berlin

Innovation Management in SMEs

In order to support small and medium Vietnamese enterprises to learn from German and EU experience in innovation, VGU together with Leipzig University and VCCI-HCMC co-organised the workshop “Innovation Management in SMEs - A Practical Approach” on Friday, 24th of July, 2015 at VCCI conference hall in HCMC. 

The presenter was Mr. Alfredo Suvelza, a lecturer from Leipzig University. He is also a visiting lecturer at HUST in Hanoi and VGU. His expertise areas as consultant including innovation management, SME development, business planning and technology transfer.

At the beginning of the workshop, the international project in4in (intelligence for innovation - website http://in4in.net) was introduced. The project aims to stimulate innovation culture and strengthen innovation management through promoting entrepreneurship in universities, consulting, training and research in the field of innovation and entrepreneurship.

What is innovation?

An innovation is an invention/idea of new products, processes, production methods, organizational forms or an elementary improvement of a system and its successful realization. 

But real innovation is a challenge. It is not just new but also should have positive impacts. Innovation is a process, which starts with the invention of a new element that leads to its practical development for commercial use. Thus, it has to be both practically useful and profitable.

Why to innovate?

Innovation can make impacts on economic development that can change the world. Innovation can make impacts on firm performance. It is important for SMEs to understand the state-of-the-art of their field. 

The innovation impulse can come from Technology Push or Market Pull. 

Technology Push: “What is technically doable?” (What possible to do in the world?) Innovation may create a demand that did not exist before.

Market Pull: “What do the customers/users want?” Marketing acts as a catalyst, and the R&D as facilitator of innovation.

Radical and Incremental Innovations

Radical innovations (‘a Quantum Jump’) require a sharp breach with conventional routines and traditional knowledge. It is typical for new technologies such as software, biotechnology, new services, etc. It is strong in USA, UK.

Incremental innovations (‘one step forward’) are further development and improvement of already established products and production processes. It is typical for established industries, such as mechanical, chemical engineering, etc. It is strong in Germany, Sweden, Switzerland.

Stages of innovation

First stages of innovation are typically carried out by public and private R&D laboratories and universities, including basic research and generic technology research. Basic research is original experimental or theoretical research that advances the knowledge in specific fields. Generic technology research is that generates generic technologies which are not specific to a product or a process. 

Later stages involve applied research, development and commercialization which is typical product development process in a company. 

10 types of Innovation 

Innovation is more than just a new product. Beside product innovation, we can also have process innovation and service innovation. 

Fig.1 Ten types of Innovation (Source: https://www.doblin.com/tentypes/)

There are also three different innovation concepts from three different actors: entrepreneur (entrepreneur concept of innovation), scientist (technology concept of innovation) and manager (strategy concept of innovation).

Innovation Management

Decisions on the implementation of innovations often deal with complexity, orientation towards future, uncertainty and risk, creativity. Innovation management is a process-oriented work, being responsible for a unifying and integral task because it involves different stakeholders/departments. Thus, interdisciplinary work is one of the key success factors for innovation.

Challenges in innovation management include high failure rates in innovation projects (up to 90% in radical innovations and 50% in incremental innovations). Challenges for innovative companies include new technologies permit the development of new products/services, shortening of product life cycles, globalization and competition, fast changing buying behavior.

Success factors of innovation management include idea, customer integration, time-to-market and price-to-market. The time of launching a product to the market has a high influence on the company’s success. Customer integration minimizes risk, creating synergy between supplier and demander and developing services that fit the customer’s needs.

Fig. 2 summarizes stages of innovation management process. 

There are tools for each stage which can be listed as following:

For idea management, the tools are intuitive techniques, analytical techniques, TRIZ (?). 

For idea evaluation, the tools are prioritization, scoring.

For decision making, the tools are portfolio analysis, quality function deployment, market research, service blueprinting, product clinic and benchmarking, road mapping, etc.

For project planning, the tools are GANTT chart, responsibility matrix, key person planning, information matrix, etc.

For feasibility evaluation, the tools are technical feasibility, cost planning, etc.

Five Levels of Leadership

5 levels of leadership 

15.4.2015 Half-day workshop on “5 Levels of Leadership”, presented by Mr. Gilbert Ng, organized by SRI at Duxton Hotel. Thanks to anh Nguyen Duy Minh, CEO and Founder of SRI Vietnam that I could attend this course. Anh Minh was one of the participants at the Violet Flame workshop in March.

Updated on May 3rd 2018 Leaders from Inside - April 26th 2018 - Inner Space Vietnam
https://www.facebook.com/InnerSpaceVn/videos/2018108395105852/

The 5 Rules of Leadership
http://www.aleanjourney.com/2018/05/the-leadership-code-five-rules-of.html

Updated on May 15th 2018
Charismatic Leadership
https://www.lifehack.org/733982/charismatic-leadership