HCMC launches Week of Innovation, Startup, Entrepreneurship

The annual week of Innovation, Startup and Entrepreneurship (WHISE) officially came back yesterday in Ho Chi Minh City.
The WHISE2018 with many interesting activities
The WHISE2018 with many interesting activities

The event is jointly introduced by the HCMC People’s Committee and Finland Embassy in Vietnam, organized by the HCMC Department of Science and Technology, the Vietnam – Finland Innovation Partnership Program (IPP), and the Business Startup Support Center. It lasts until October 19, 2018.

During the course of the week, a variety of activities will be held, including the scientific conference ‘Technological Solutions for Smart Cities’ to introduce the project ‘Transforming HCMC into a Smart City’, the scientific and technological study ‘Researching information technology to serve smart cities and Industry 4.0 in the period from 2018 – 2020, with a vision to 2025, as well as technological solutions related to building smart urban areas and the application of Artificial Intelligence in smart traffic management.

Another remarkable activity is the conference ‘10 Years of Developing Intellectual Property Management in HCMC and creating innovative startup ecosystems’ to summarize all training activities for the development of intellectual property management in the city while introducing the national strategy for intellectual possession in the period from 2018 – 2020.

The first formal activity of WHISE 2018 was the launch of the contest ‘Seeking Geographic Information System (GIS) Solutions – Products in HCMC 2018’ by the HCMC Department of Science and Technology. This competition aims at finding suitable technological methods and products to tackle problems and create breakthroughs in the process to transform HCMC into a smart and innovative city of the nation.

Simultaneously, the activity ‘HCMGIS PLATFORMS – Platform for GIS Applications in HCMC’ will present the detailed plan of the city to implement GIS until 2020, certain prominent GIS software.

The conference ‘Adapting Communication in Industry 4.0’ was also held to support organizations and businesses to identify opportunities as well as challenges when approaching the targeted public in Industry 4.0.

On October 11, the HCMC Department of Science and Technology cooperated with the HCMC Medical Equipment Association to hold the Techmart 2018 ‘Medical Technology, Equipment, and Environmental Solutions for Hospitals and Clinics’ at the Center for Science and Technology Information – CESTI, sited at 79 Truong Dinh Street, Ben Thanh Ward, District 1 of HCMC. More than 40 organizations attend this Techmart to display and sell hundreds of technologies, equipment, research results, as well as industrial products for the healthcare field, many of which are from domestic companies.

Noticeably, on October 18 – 19, at the conference center Riverside Palace (located in District 4 of HCMC), there will be a technological exhibition and an innovative startup conference with around 200 booths.

A series of minor activities will also be launched in this event, consisting of the exhibition ‘Innovative Children’, a fair on technological products of start-up businesses, an investment connection program for startups in Vietnam, the ‘Startup Show’, the conference ‘Tech Startups’, a chương trình Kết nối đầu tư, Đầu tư vào Startups tại Việt Nam, chương trình Startup Show, Hội thảo “Tech Startups”, a cooperation memorandum signing ceremony between many domestic and international organizations to grow innovative startup ecosystems in HCMC (the HCMC Department of Science and Technology, Lotte Accelerator, and Vietnam Silicon Valley Accelerator), the conference ‘Developing Education in the Future’, a session to introduce products of startup businesses to potential investors and customers.

WHISE 2018 continues its previous successful WHISE 2017, showing the effort of HCMC to maintain supportive and cooperative activities for members of the innovative startup ecosystems not only in the city but also in the whole nation and the world.

It is hoped via this WHISE 2018, all promising projects and models of innovative startups are able to attract sufficient capital from investors to have sustainable developments in the future

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