Professor, Department of Electronic & Computer Engineering, HKUST
XbotPark Incubator
Shenzhen InnoX Academy
From Labs to Startups: Building a Startup Ecosystem in the Greater Bay Area
Join us for this lecture
Thursday, December 15, 2022
11:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m.
Building 19, Hall 1
Startup success rate, even in places like Silicon Valley, is low, typically in the single-digit range. We also (painfully) observe that academic performances such as test scores, GPAs and even publication records don’t translate into one’s entrepreneurship skills. All these indicate that developing a sound entrepreneurship education program in a university, no matter where it stands in academic rankings, such as QS, THE or ARWU, is a difficult endeavor.In this talk, I will describe our journey to develop a startup ecosystem in the Greater Bay Area (GBA) of China, which includes Hong Kong, Macao and nine cities in the neighboring Guangdong Province (an area of 56 thousand square kilometers, and population of 70 million). In 1999, with the setup of the HKUST IER platform in Shenzhen, we founded Googol Tech, which is now a leading motion control company in China. In 2004, we introduced a project course in robot design through which students are empowered with not only hands-on and teamwork skills but also become familiar with the supply chain system in Shenzhen. About one third of the graduates from the Automation Technology Center (ATC) later went on to found their own companies, more than 50 in total, including DJI, QKM, ePropulsion, etc. In 2015, we founded the XbotPark Incubator in Dongguan (a GBA city north of Shenzhen) for mainly new graduates from colleges. More than 60 startups emerged from this program, with a survival rate of 80% and 15% achieving unicorn (more than 1B USD valuation) or near unicorn status. In 2021, we founded the Shenzhen InnoX Academy to provide a one-year entrepreneurship education program for Year 3/4 students and PG students from a consortium of universities.
Prof. Zexiang Li
- Professor, Department of Electronic & Computer Engineering, HKUS
- Founder of XbotPark
- Founder of Shenzhen Innox Academy
- Director of Hong Kong center for Construction Robotic
- Chairman of Googol Technology
- Chairman of Changsha Intelligent Driving Institute (CiDi)
Zexiang Li attended the South-Central University in 1978, received his BS (with honor) degrees in Electrical Engineering and Economics from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1983, his MS degree in EECS in 1985, MA in mathematics and Ph.D. in EECS in 1989, all from the University of California at Berkeley. He worked at ALCOA, the Robotics Institute of CMU and the AI Lab of MIT (89-90). He was an assistant professor at the Courant Institute of New York University (90-92). In 1992, he joined the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and is currently a professor in the department. He founded the Automation Technology Center (ATC) and serves as its director.Zexiang Li’s research areas of interest include multifingered robotic hand, parallel manipulators, workpiece localization and inspection, motion control, precision assembly, and unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs). He has published more than 200 papers and 4 monographs. He was selected as an IEEE Fellow in 2007.
He was the general Chair for the 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). In 2019, Li was selected as a co-recipient of the 2019 IEEE Robotics and Automation Award for his influential “contributions to the development of civilian drones, aerial imaging technology, robotics engineering advancement, innovation and entrepreneurship.Z exiang Li co-founded several companies with his colleagues and students from the Automation Technology Center, including Googol Tech (the first motion control company in China), DJI (a leading company in UAV and flycam products), QKM Tech (an automation company providing excellent robot products and services to manufacturers worldwide) and ePropulsion (an innovative provider of high-performance marine electric propulsion systems). In 2014, he co-founded Clear Water Bay Venture Capital and Songshan Lake Xbot Park to incubate and promote the robotic industry. He was appointed to the Commission on Strategic Development of the Hong Kong SAR government in 2015, and was awarded the Hong Kong Innovation Leader Award in 2018.
In 2020, he was awarded as an innovative and entrepreneurial figure and a model in the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (40 people in Shenzhen in the past 40 years).
