January 27, 2018. Shanghai – The 2018 CEIBS Entrepreneurial Leadership Camp (CELC) and Venture Capital Camp (CVCC) welcomed 350 alumni back to the Shanghai Campus today, to share ideas on business innovation and the latest entrepreneurial trends and opportunities in New Retail, block chain and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

CEIBS President Li Mingjun opened the Alumni Reunion Day event by calling on the entrepreneurs to be persistent, and stay focused and curious. Wealth should never be the only criterion for measuring one’s life, he said, adding, “We should keep creating value for society and assume the responsibility our society expects from us”.

Professor of Entrepreneurial Management Practice Gong Yan, who is the Programme Director for both the CELC and CVCC, introduced the programmes’ latest development milestones. He said that the CELC’s mission is to discover and accompany the makers with the most potential along their entrepreneurial journey, while the CVCC is focused on identifying the most cutting-edge technologies and business trends to enable investors and entrepreneurs to grasp opportunities ahead of others.

Professor of Economics and Finance Xu Xiaonian shared his thoughts on “Entrepreneurship & Innovation”. He pointed out that many start-ups today lack imagination and independent thinking and blindly follow the trends. He noted that they keep rushing into certain market segments with homogeneous ideas, products and services, resulting in vicious competition and an outrageous waste of resources and capital. Good businesses create and lead trends rather than follow the existing ones, said Professor Xu.