Global Kick-Off in Hefei/China (3): Lectures are getting started

Hey, on day two it is our turn to give you the most interesting news from the global kickoff of SUGAR: team JaMaMaPa with Janna, Marie, Marius and Patrick.

After a warming up session on day one with some introductions to the Chinese culture, the sugar network and the kickoff event, finally today, the work on our challenges began. It was also our first day at the USTC West Campus. Unfortunately, it was raining, so we could not explore the student’s environment here. We will have to postpone this to another day. But we have already seen the soccer field where the notorious paper bike challenge is going to take place.

Jumping into the event, in the morning, we had the honor to receive a talk by the vice mayor of Hefei in the pleasant conference hall of the USTC. He emphasized that Hefei is an attractive city with a focus on innovative industries and global partners. Falk, a member of the teaching team St. Gallen, gave us a quick overview of the first phase of Design Thinking – the Design Space Exploration. Afterwards, a working session in our team began. At first, we had to clarify some of the key questions which included the collection of some general information about our company, the reason why the company chose Design Thinking for their problem as well as the definition of the challenge. It was difficult to stop our discussions because we were already very enthusiastic about it.

As time in the morning passed quickly, we enjoyed a well-deserved lunch consisting of rice with chicken at noon. The kickoff participants showed its internationality afterwards by doing a Japanese relaxing sports session. With some more information about needfinding and the important stakeholder map for our challenge, we were introduced to the things we have to work on during the whole week. Niels and Gerhard presented some important Dos and Don’ts concerning the contact with executives of our company. At the end of the second working phase of the day, our valued colleagues from the KIT Johanna, Paulina, Bene and Julius presented their work status achieved so far. And what can we say: They nailed it!

Of course, in the evening we wanted to get to know some more culinary delights from China. Having some new things learnt and a full belly we went to bed.

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