(Suzhou, 19 December 2019) - NHC Sports and their Finnish partners have joined hands in bringing Nordic ice sports, big data expertise and entrepreneurial accelerator experience to China, jointly announcing the opening of NHC Sports, registered in Suzhou in East China's Jiangsu Province.
NHC Sports focuses on introducing Finland's ice sports into the Yangtze Delta and will, in partnership with Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences, apply a host of the latest technologies to assist in proliferation of ice sports, wherein Finland takes a dominant lead in the world.
"Beijing Winter Olympic Games is just three years away and there is an enormous enthusiasm over winter sports in China among the masses," said Edwin Ngoi, Founder and CEO of NHC Sports, over a glass of champagne at the opening ceremony. "Compared with Northeast and North China, winter sport has a rather limited presence in the Yangtze Delta region, so we are taking the lead in plugging in this market void."
Mr Pasi Halmari, Program Manager of Global Education Services at Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences (HHUAS), said that his university will lend support to NHC Sports by way of bringing in sports facilities and equipment and coaches.
In addition, the university will consider launching an EMBA program in collaboration with NHC Sports in Suzhou, transferring the Finnish experience and expertise in sports management to China, Mr Halmari said.
Meanwhile, this also occasioned the official launch of Lab8 of Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences in Suzhou, which will share the same 500-sqm office with the NHC Sports. Lab8 comprises of three new world-class laboratories to act as platforms for learning and research as well as initial commercialisation: Service Experience Lab focuses on service design and service experience, Sales Lab focuses on buyer-seller interaction analysis while E-Commerce Lab is dedicated to e-commerce analytics to improve efficiency in e-commerce transactions.
"The technologies used in the lab include latest forms of augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality, emotion artificial intelligence, facial expression analyses, eye-tracking, galvanic skin response, semantic analyses, speech related analyses among others," Mr Halmari said.
The university is also working to bring a startup nurturing program entitled Nordic Innovative Company Creation Acceleration Program (NICCAP), to Suzhou.
NICCAP is a comprehensive new business idea development model starting from an innovation hackathon that ideally involves 80 students or aspiring entrepreneurs, followed by a scalability workshop, and a financing boot-camp in an interval of one or two months. The purpose is, by providing networks, contacts, resources and skills, to create new cross-border companies and expand the boundary of the innovation ecosystem, explained Jari Luomakoski, Senior Lecturer at Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences in Suzhou.
NICCAP will start its second edition next month, to be participated by college students from Finland and some neighbouring countries such as Estonia and Latvia, he added.
Mr Luomakaski conducted a one-day workshop for nearly 20 students of the Suzhou Industrial Park Institute of Vocational Technology a day earlier, a rather miniature of NICCAP, to give the Chinese students a sampling of what it is like. At the end of the training the students all obtained certifications of accomplishments from the two scholars of the Finnish university.
The two universities also signed a memorandum of understanding to engage in “2+2 Programme", which will allow Chinese students studying in the Suzhou college the option of continuing for two more years of study in the Finnish counterpart's campus in Helsinki.
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