Newsletter No. 447

447 • 19.11.2014 3 requires more time, not less. You have to write a draft then go through it and eliminate any words that aren’t necessary.’ Delete and retype—that’s what the former Google man essentially says. And letter writers of all ages are no strangers to drafting, destroying the drafts, and drafting again. By the way, Schmidt offers a total of nine golden rules for e-mailing which can, of course, be googled. Closure is always an art in letters. I have a soft spot for the parting words in eighteenth- century English familiar letters with which the writers reiterate and reaffirm their loyalty and/ or affection for the recipients. I wish I had the same skill and sentiment, or that someone at the receiving end. No such finery for e-mails. Your obliged friend I remain, H. ‘Reply to All’ with an e-mail, to a spectrum of positions, dispositions and purposes all comfortably or uncomfortably squeezed into the balcony of your act. It is the one button that merits the greatest caution. You don’t get to lick the envelope or the stamp. But should anything go wrong, you would be swallowing your spit. Having said all this, the two media actually share more than that meets the eye. For one, cc (carbon copy) and bcc (blind carbon copy) are legacies from the epistolary to the electronic. More than two centuries ago, Philip Dormer Stanhope (1694–1773), the fourth Earl of Chesterfield, gave some advice on letter-writing to his godson Philip Stanhope, later the fifth Earl of Chesterfield: ‘Letters of business must be answered immediately...the subject is ready and only requires great clearness and perspicuity in treatment. There must be no prettynesses, no quaintnesses, no Antitheses, nor even wit.’ Quick response and crisp prose are the first two cardinal rules of e-mailing for Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google. Schmidt advised acting quickly on e-mails, and not just to a few selected senders but to everyone. Even a short response like ‘got it’ is recommended. Once you are known for responding to e-mails quickly, your non- or delayed response, in individual cases, becomes a message in itself. Schmidt is no fan of prettynesses , quaintnesses , Antitheses , or wit , either. He said, ‘If you are describing a problem, define it clearly. Doing this Letter 4: The Rhyme and Reason of E-mails 6 November 2014 Dear K., In a previous letter I wrote about e-mails with scepticism. Well, I do not actually object so much to this new mode of communication as to the confusion with its predecessor in the hands of the careless and the unwitting. One must know when one is writing a letter or when one is writing an e-mail, and there are lessons to be drawn from the one on the other. For a start, an extra piece of information or document is enclosed with a letter, but attached to an e-mail. Hack phrases such as ‘I refer to...’ and ‘With reference to...’ should be used with scruples in e-mails, as they are quickfire correspondences where the full text of the referred-to message often appears immediately below, and the full-text of the previous one further below, ad infinitum . Another important difference is that a letter is addressed to and read by one. Maybe a few at times. An e-mail enjoys no such familiarity or anonymity. It can be addressed to many at the same time, and is usually forwarded to and read by many unintended readers in the nick of time. So write for those you have in mind, as well as those whom you have no way of knowing or anticipating! Consider that mission impossible. You send a reply letter to one—to agree, to challenge, to cajole, whatever. But you can 一封家書 Letters to a Young Executive 觀看Pi Centre錄像,請掃描QR碼或瀏覽以下網址: To watch the video of Pi Centre, please scan the QR code or visit: www.iso.cuhk.edu.hk/video/?nsl447-pi-centre T o many, ’student entrepreneurship’ conjures up an image of a bunch of 20-year-old students staying up late in a dorm room testing out their makeshift products—just as how the legendary Steve Jobs , Bill Gates , Larry Page , Sergey Brin , Mark Zuckerberg and the like came up with world-shaking ideas when they were students. However, at CUHK, student entrepreneurship may take different forms. Prof. Fanny M.C. Cheung , Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research) at CUHK, knows it well. She has been working at CUHK, a public institution richly steeped in Chinese heritage, for more than 30 years. Her colleagues would brand her an ‘entrepreneur’ because of the many research centres, programmes, non-profit associations and public bodies that she has founded inside and outside campus. ‘You don’t need to start your own business to become an entrepreneur’, she explained. ‘Entrepreneurship is about creativity and flexibility; it’s about seizing an opportunity with whatever little resource you have to create a new entity with an impact. Entrepreneurship is not tied to the setting of a workplace; it is related to the mindset and attitude of the workers.’ So when Prof. Joseph J.Y. Sung , Vice-Chancellor of CUHK, suggested to set up a startup incubator on campus, Professor Cheung studied how other world-class universities support student entrepreneurship before she started discussing with the stakeholders. Professor Cheung recalled, ‘We arrived at the idea of a Pre-incubation Centre (Pi Centre) for our students to acquire entrepreneurial thinking and how to become entrepreneurs.’ The concept of an incubator for student entrepreneurship did not just come out of the blue. ‘CUHK has been hosting and participating in a number of local and international student innovation and entrepreneurship events every year,’ explained Prof. Wong Kam-fai , chairman of the Committee of Advancement of Student Entrepreneurship and Innovation. ‘Many of these events are in the form of competitions held in Hong Kong, the mainland and the US. We have felt a rapid growth in student innovation and believed that it was the right time to have a dedicated space for students to turn their creativity into ventures on an ongoing basis.’ The establishment of the Pi Centre was finally decided in late 2013 and it has been in operation since February 2014. The first call for application attracted 22 teams of students, among which nine teams were selected by a panel of external industry advisers. The second call for application in September 2014 attracted 20 teams, and seven teams were selected. The admitted teams are provided with a stimulating and a well-equipped workspace in the Lady Ho Tung Hall supported by a full-time staff member, and mentored by an experienced consultant. To date, a few teams from the first call for application have developed well enough to exit the Pi Centre, and one of them is ready to move to the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks to start a business. The Pi Centre is operated by the Centre for Entrepreneurship under the directorship of Prof. Kevin Au . ‘For many years, we had developed many programmes and facilitated many activities for students, professors, and alumni to meet with experienced entrepreneurs and investors in Hong Kong,’ Professor Au said. ‘What had been missing was a dedicated place where people could meet for regular events or just stopped by to check things out. Now, with the Pi Centre, we finally have a place where participants can shape a culture—a culture of sharing, openness, and mutual benefits. We want participants to feel that the Pi Centre is inspiring, resourceful, and full of smart and friendly people, and they will look forward to coming back again and again.’ The Pi Centre holds workshops and events regularly, sometimes in the evening, to make it easier for even entrepreneurs and speakers from outside CUHK to participate and share their experience. Student entrepreneurship at CUHK reached another milestone last month when a new fund known as the ‘Technology Start-up Support Scheme for Universities’ (TSSSU) was made available to CUHK students and professors to start their own companies. This HK$4 million annual fund, provided by the Innovation and Technology Commission (ITC) of the HKSAR Government, is administered by CUHK’s Office of Research and Knowledge Transfer Services (ORKTS). Each company selected by a CUHK advisory panel can receive a subsidy of up to HK$500,000 per year for up to three years. Dr. Tony Tsoi , associate director of ORKTS, highlighted the significance of this new fund, ‘Startup companies with great product ideas often fail prematurely before they attract funding from investors. With this new fund from ITC, these companies can hold on long enough to prove to investors the feasibility and market demand for their products.’ The success rate of startups is low, and most successful entrepreneurs hone their skills and knowledge by learning from failures. While student entrepreneurship is given a tangible push with the establishment of the Pi Centre and the TSSSU fund, what is really important to CUHK is the entrepreneurial experience that students can gain when developing their ideas into ventures. It is the experience of going through many ups and downs that students learn about handling failure, perseverance, conflict resolution and, most importantly, themselves.

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