Professor Way Kuo, President of City University of Hong Kong (CityU), spoke at the opening ceremony of the 6th International Conference on Systematic Innovation (ICSI) on 15 July.

He officiated at the ceremony alongside Mr Gregory So Kam-leung, Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development of the Hong Kong SAR Government; Dr Lo Wai-kwok, Member of the Legislative Council for the Engineering constituency; and Dr Eden Woon Yi-teng, Vice-President for Institutional Advancement at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where the event was held.

Professor Kuo, in his opening remarks, said there were problems arising from innovation, and one might not always have enough information to make the required decisions.

“Innovation, as well as systematic innovation, involves several kinds of problems,” he said. “One is when something is actually right but you think it is wrong; the other kind is when someone makes a mistake, and you think the person is right. These are the producer’s risk and the other is the consumer’s risk. There is a third kind: you have the right solution, but the problem is wrong”.

Dealing with big data can be problematic, too, he added, since people tend to draw incorrect conclusions when working with a lot of data. Small data is also inherently challenging.

“When I was a student in Taiwan, my chemistry professor said we should use two or three dots to draw a line. In our lives today, though, sometimes we have to draw a line based on just one piece of data, or even with no data at all,” he added. 

The three-day conference publicised theoretical and technological advances in SI, which included systematic, strategic, managerial or technical innovations.

The conference contained plenary speeches and tutorials run by world renowned SI researchers and practitioners, and parallel technical sessions.