“It’s not over even if you fail”

Four GIST students are selected as Campus CEOs

- GIST’s Campus CEO Challenge project offers up to 200 million KRW to a Campus CEO

- “Failure is not failure.” This project allows creative failure and guarantees autonomy of a Campus CEO as much as possible.

- As the business is related to each Campus CEO’s research field, the chance of success improves and Campus CEOs can juggle their businesses with their studies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

□ Startups by students and the creative economy are considered as the major objectives to be achieved for economic growth. Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST, President ž Young Joon Kim) launched “Campus CEO Challenge” project, a program to establish the infrastructure which helps students establish startups and the ‘ecosystem’ in GIST which lays the foundation for startups. And the project evaluated students’ business plans and their business feasibility and selected four students as “Campus CEOs”.

❍ As the first step of the project, each of the four students will get 50 million KRW for six to nine months to develop a prototype and conduct lab tests with no obligation to succeed. (A lab test is a field test to evaluate the performance of a prototype and its business feasibility by the experts related to each startup’s field of business.)

❍ As the second step of the project, a “Campus CEO” who passes a lab test will get additional 100 to 150 million KRW to manufacture and sell the product based on the prototype and to test run the business. As the final step, a Campus CEO who passes the final evaluation of his/her test run will start his/her own business.

 

□ The GIST Technology Institute (GTI) forms a group of mentors composed of experts in technology, marketing, investment, and business foundation for Campus CEOs and they provide Campus CEOs with advice at each step of the project, including making business plans and establishing actual businesses.

❍ GIST held an appointment ceremony for “GIST Campus CEOs” at GIST’s Administration Building on December 10 (Tuesday). Four students taking doctorate courses received certificates of appointment as Campus CEOs: Jung Ji Sung (School of Mechatronics), Kim Young Woong (Department of Physics and Photon Science), Jung Sang Ho (School of Environmental Science and Engineering), and Kim Tae Yong (School of Medical System Engineering).

 

□ GIST’s “Campus CEO Challenge” project focuses on the sustainability, which means the stable provision of relevant technologies while utilizing GIST’s lab facilities, and honorable failure and autonomy, which means tolerance to failure and respect for a Campus CEO’s business plan and schedule.

 

□ This project to train and support startups is selected as a model case of a training program for technology entrepreneurship, which is a part of Five STAR(Science and Technology After R&D) Initiative announced by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning and South Korea’s five research-oriented universities (GIST, KAIST, DGIST, UNIST, and POSTECH) in May this year.

 

□ Four Campus CEOs submitted business plans for a robotic vacuum cleaner, bio-sensors, and water purifiers respectively.