Chula Employs “Speedboat” Strategy to Drive Innovations for Society

To celebrate Chulalongkorn University’s 105th anniversary, Chula President has announced the success of the “Speedboat Strategy” in steering Chula through a volatile world to drive social innovations, focusing on being a research university that teaches, overhauling curriculum and building graduates’ competencies for the future.

Professor Dr. Bundhit Eua-arporn, Chula President elaborates on the “Speedboat Strategy” and Chula’s vision under his leadership saying, “I have set a vision of Innovations for Society as the core of our university administration to harness knowledge and wisdom to make society better, in line with our motto ‘when society is troubled, Chula has the solutions’.”

“We have to break up into smaller boats to do new things, which requires new people. In addition, we also need to set up a new working team of agile people with a positive attitude who can seek new opportunities in different directions and environments to deliver quality work that benefits society.”

Over the past few years, many Chula’s “Speedboats” have pioneered new waters and “disrupted” society. Innovation Hub(https://www.chula.ac.th/en/highlight/64207/) (iHub), for instance, which has incubated over 300 start-ups whose portfolios have generated almost 17 billion baht market valuation; the BaScii program(https://scii.chula.ac.th/bascii-programs/) which signed an MoU with the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology (SCET) of the University of California, Berkeley granting Chula students the opportunity to learn innovative startup how-tos in Silicon Valley (Boot camp, Silicon Valley Innovation Leadership Program); CU Enterprise(http://www.sustainability.chula.ac.th/report/2083/)(CUE) that supports Chula’s startups by raising funds for innovations that benefit the country; Degree Plus program(https://www.chula.ac.th/en/clipping/72739/), an open education platform that promotes “Online with Human Touch” education for the general public.

The main product of the university is its “people”. Chula focuses on creating future leaders who go out to serve society. “Apart from academic knowledge, Chula students need to be cultivated for competency to solve complex problems and be well endowed with good characteristics to manage and live in a fast-changing, tough, creative and out-of-the-box world.”

The next step that Prof. Dr. Bundhit hopes for is that Chula can be even better sooner in academic, research, and innovation matters in which all members of the Chula community have been invested in for the past six years. This means that Chula needs to alter its structure and work to keep up with a rapidly changing world.

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Source: Chulalongkorn University Communication Center