On the afternoon of March 18, 2026, faculty representatives, alumni entrepreneurship mentors, and students from BNBU visited HKBU to attend the cocktail reception for the Dean’s Cup Business Innovation Gymnasium (BIG) event. This event aims to strengthen the collaborative education mechanism between the two universities, promote cooperation in innovation and entrepreneurship education, and establish a platform for students to communicate.

The “Dean’s Cup BIG11.0” innovation and entrepreneurship competition, hosted by HKBU, has officially commenced. BNBU will select outstanding students from across the university to join existing HKBU teams, enabling them to participate in the competition together.

PART.01

At the beginning, students from the two universities participated in an ice-breaking session. After a brief introduction to the rules of the BIG competition, the participating HKBU students took turns presenting their project overviews and outlining their team talent needs. Subsequently, students from both universities engaged in free discussions, exchanging ideas on project directions and collaboration models.

In this competition, BNBU students will participate by joining existing HKBU teams. The selected students will advance to the semifinals with their teams, forming mixed BNBU+HKBU teams, and will be jointly mentored by faculty mentors from both universities.

PART.02

Group Photo

At the cocktail reception, Dr. Marta Dowejko, Head of the Innovation Centre at HKBU, expressed her delight in seeing students from the two universities engage in in-depth exchanges through the BIG competition platform. She noted that the Innovation Centre has always been committed to providing students with diverse opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship practice, and that this collaboration represents an important exploration of cross-university collaborative education. She looked forward to seeing everyone fully demonstrate their talents in the competition and use innovative thinking to solve real-world problems.

Mr. Raymond CHU, representative of Hong Kong Science and Technology Park, noted that the teams shortlisted for the finals will fast-track into the Science Park Ideation Program and receive seed funding of up to HK$100,000 to support project incubation. Subsequently, they will also have access to more in-depth incubation and acceleration resources, helping outstanding projects grow into unicorns or publicly listed companies. He expressed his hope that students from both universities would seize the opportunity and demonstrate their innovative potential.

Mr. Lu Hongzhou, Executive Director of the Innovation Centre at BNBU, mentioned that this year marks the third year of collaboration between the two universities on the competition. He was glad to see that faculty and students from both institutions could take this opportunity to communicate and participate in innovation and entrepreneurship practices. The winning teams will have the opportunity to travel to Wai Lingding Island during the summer to take part in the 2026 Summer Bootcamp, where they will focus on refining their projects and enhancing their entrepreneurial skills. He hopes that students will cherish this cross-university collaboration opportunity and achieve improvements in both project quality and practical capabilities.

As the exchanges deepened, faculty and students further aligned project needs and established collaborative connections in a relaxed atmosphere. This cocktail reception not only built a bridge for cross-university communication among students, but also breathed new life into projects through the model of cross-university team formation and dual-mentor guidance. Moving forward, BNBU will continue to deepen its collaboration with HKBU, providing students with more high-quality innovation and entrepreneurship resources, and supporting young talents in achieving breakthroughs on their entrepreneurial journeys.

Group Photo of BNBU Faculty and Students

The smooth progress of this event and the cross-university team formation mechanism would not have been possible without the strong support of our mentors. We extend our gratitude to all the supervising mentors who joined the “Dual-Mentor Program”: on-campus mentors (Wang Xi, Wang Peng, Lan Xiaomeng, Li Yunhua, Ji Yanyan, Hu Chenguang, Huang Qingfeng, Ge Mingming, Xu Xiaying) and alumni mentors (Guo Jianpeng, Wang Qian, Chen Xuejiao, An Jiale, Lang Qixu, Liu Xiaohan, Cai Cheng, Wang Yaodong); as well as BNBU alumnus Yang Fan. It is your dedicated guidance and generous sharing of knowledge that have enabled students from both universities to make progress in innovation and entrepreneurship