Innovation Is Progressive Soul for the Students, and Innovative Thinking is the Key to Competitions of the School
Innovation, as a theory, was formed in the 20th century. Prof. Joseph Alois Schumpeter of Harvard University, firstly introduced innovation into the economy in 1912.
In 1985, Peter Drucker, the “father of modern management”, one of his most important works is “Innovation and Entrepreneurship”. The book emphasized that the current economy has been developed from “Managed Economy” into “Innovative Economy”. He believes that “Innovation is the entrepreneur's specific tools, and the innovative approaches change according to opportunities of different enterprises or different service. Innovation is a discipline and can be achieved through learning and practice”.
Throughout the history of human development, innovation has always been an important force for the development of a country, a nation, and even a school. Scientific and technological innovation is an important key to the prosperity of the country.
Therefore, during the opening ceremony of Hubei University in 2016, school party secretary Mr. Shang Gang made three remarks to the students,
1) Love yourself and love others in sync;
2) Learning and thinking in sync;
3) Practice and innovation in sync.
When he talked about the practice and innovation, he particularly emphasized that the students should make full use of all levels and kinds of training platforms, take an active part in the projects of academic research, carry out social practice at the grassroots level, and constantly improve the innovation ability.
To implement the spirits of school leaders, Dr. Tian Jian, Professor of College of Materials Science and Engineering, Hubei University, Dean of Hubei University Tianshu Industrial Research and Design Institute of New Energy Materials (Tianshu IRDI), gave a lecture at the opening ceremony of College of Materials Science and Engineering on Sept. 18th, 2016. The theme of the lecture was “Cultivating Creative Thinking”.
Prof. Tian Jian talk about the purpose, essence, characteristics and significant of creative thinking, as well as how to cultivate the innovative way of thinking, etc. He explained innovative design for enterprises combining his own practice for innovation concepts in recent years.
He believed that innovation requires practice, creativity needs to be played, and the premise is innovative thinking. Innovative thinking is the thinking process of novel and unique method to solve the problem. Through this kind of thinking, it can break through the boundaries of conventional thinking, to think about the problem with extraordinary even unconventional methods and angles, to put forward different solutions, to produce novel, unique and socially significant thinking achievements. The essence of innovative thinking is to elevate the perceptual desire of innovative consciousness to rational exploration, and realize the leap of creative activity from perceptual to rational thought.
He said that students will go to society in the future. If they want to be a creative person, they need to be good at blank thinking and fantasy thinking. If they want to engage in scholarship in the future, they need to be good at comparative thinking and critical thinking. If they want to be an entrepreneur, they need to be good at risk thinking and competitive thinking. If they want to be a business leader, they need to be good at macro-thinking and strategic thinking.
He also believed that the ability of innovative thinking and lack will determine the future of a college. The high and low (big and small) of innovative thinking will determine the broad scope of a college. The superhuman and ordinary ability of innovative thinking will determine the courage of a college. The explicit and implicit ability of innovative thinking will determine the target design of a college.
Particularly, he stressed that students will have to deal with the relationship between management innovation and technological innovation and institutional innovation in the future. He believed that management innovation and technological innovation are mutually cooperative and mutually reinforcing. Management innovation is the inherent guarantee of technological innovation, and technological innovation is a way to management innovation. Management innovation and institutional innovation are complementary. Management innovation is the foundation of institutional innovation, and institutional innovation provides dynamic mechanism for management innovation. Students would have a great future in society if they are able to deal with these three relationships in the future.
Finally, he believes that the students of College of Materials Science and Engineering would have great future. Because new materials can change the world, which is the difference between the bronze age and the silver age. Concrete, stainless steel and silicon bring up modern times. Now there is an emerging material of single-layer atoms with unlimited potential. These materials are well known and have developed in the past few years, including generic lattice layer of Carbon (Graphene), Boron (Allyl Boron), Hexagonal Boron Nitride (white Graphene), Germanium (Germylene), Silicon (Silene), Phosphorus (Phosphinidene) and Tin (Stannylene) etc. Although, many 2-D materials are not actually synthesized but have been proved theoretically feasible, such as synthetic Graphene from Carbon. Each kind of the 2-D materials with special properties can be combined into more new materials like Lego bricks.
In the ‘Top 10 emerging technologies of 2016” appraised and elected by the World Economy BBS's, 2-D materials can be applied to everything from sensors to airplane wings. The most famous single-atom layer, Graphene, opens a new door for scientists. Dr. Tian Jian hope that somebody of the students would be lucky to be one of them.
