CHINESE TO TALK INNOVATION HERE

CMU to host panels urging collaboration

With technology rendering the physical barriers between American and Chinese businesses obsolete, a Carnegie Mellon University summit that starts tomorrow and should draw hundreds of participants is aiming to erode some of the cultural and knowledge hurdles that tend to block collaboration.

Investors, entrepreneurs and industry giants of the East and West will be part of the fourth annual CMU Summit on U.S.-China Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Created in 2012 by the university’s Chinese Student and Scholars Association as a day of networking and keynote addresses, the summit has grown into a twoday event packed with more than 30 featured panel discussions, keynote addresses by business leaders from both countries and an investors roundtable.

Plus, the CMU Summit New Venture Competition — a startup pitch competition — will award more than $50,000 in cash prizes to top teams.

China is certainly an appealing market for businesses large and small seeking to reach its growing consumer base. It saw its GDP grow an average of 9 percent annually from 2000 to 2010, according to The World Bank. Sixty percent of its urban population will qualify as middle class (households with incomes between $6,000 and $25,000) by next year, according to China Business Review.

Last year alone, U.S. exporters sent more than $124 billion in goods and services to China, with $2.3 billion coming from Pennsylvania businesses, according to U.S. Commercial Service.

Pittsburgh in particular has a great deal of useful experience it can share to help better China’s future, said Bing Zhou, chairman of the CMU summit.

“The environmental problem is becoming very severe in China, and Pittsburgh [once] was facing the same kinds of problems. Now we can see Pittsburgh is one of the best places to live in the U.S.,” Mr. Zhou said.

“Pittsburgh has managed to transform from a heavily industrial city to its current state — focused on medical, high tech and innovation. We want to learn from this experience, because in Beijing and in Hubei, those two places are heavily industrialized and are facing the same problems with smoke.”

If sharing solutions for common problems is a theme of the summit, creating cross-country investment opportunities is the plot.

Those who attend will have access to officials representing Wexford-based Blue Tree Allied Angels; Woodcliff Lake, N.J.-based Edelson Technology Partners; and Palo Alto, Calif.-based ZPark Capital, as well as Beijing-based firms IDG Capital Partners and Zhen Fund.

Add an expanded pitch competition that includes students from Harvard, Princeton and other Ivy League universities, as well as China’s Tsinghua University and Peking Universities, and opportunities to invest across the Pacific Ocean will abound.

“The United States is recognized as one of the most developed countries in the world, especially for its technology. So we really hope to build a bridge between China and the U.S., and try to let China borrow some technology essentials from the U.S.,” said Yin Zheng, CMU master’s student and director of media relations for the summit.

“Also, there are so many Chinese students at CMU. Carnegie Mellon is one of the most internationalized universities in the United States,” Ms. Zheng said.

“We hope that these Chinese students can bring technology and build a communications bridge between these two countries and try to, on one hand, groom technologies in the United States and, on the other hand, try to introduce new things to our own country.”

Although there’s much to learn for entrepreneurs and investors on both sides of the globe — the U.S. Commercial Service’s website outlines everything from intellectual property concerns to market entry strategies for businesses considering exports to China — Ms. Zheng said the most important lessons will come from face-to-face conversations between Chinese and American citizens.

The Beijing native said she knew both American and Chinese students who struggled to make critical connections overseas when trying to start their own businesses because they tended to stick to their own cultures.

If the summit addresses anything, she hoped it would tackle the shared struggle of cross-cultural friendship.

“Since Carnegie Mellon has so many Chinese and Indian students, sometimes people don’t want to group together. They’re afraid to step outside and go into the other circle, into another world,” she said. “We really hope that we bring some new air into this university, some new air into our Chinese students’ circle and try to let them know more people.”