Nobel Chemistry Prize Laureate, Professor Dan Shechtman was invited to KAIST on November 7 to give a special lecture on “Demographics, Technological Entrepreneurship and the Future of Korea” at the Terman Hall, Creative Learning Building. Professor Shechtman gave his insight in educating the next generation of entrepreneurs and cases back from his home country Israel.
Professor Shechtman launched his talk by comparing the demographics of South Korea and Israel, indicating the unsustainable population decline expected for Korea. He expressed the importance of having a sustainable youth population to keep a strong economy. The speaker stated five important factors in raising a good entrepreneurial nation: basic education for all, engineering and science education, government policy and support, and a free market economy. Most important of all, the speaker named the absence of corruption as a key factor. Professor Shechtman mentioned some cases in which start-ups were held back by rampant administrative corruption in some countries.
In education, he stressed students should be exposed to all steps of entrepreneurship and learn from their mistakes to survive in the real world. For example, in Israeli high schools, students are taught everything ranging from setting a company by registering papers to developing a marketable product. Common mishaps for start-ups were mentioned in the lecture, from issues such as insufficient market survey and finding wrong source of funding to personal matters such as partnering with friends rather than professionals.
Professor Shechtman recounted his personal experiences in the field of entrepreneurship and science education. He introduced the acclaimed Technological Entrepreneurship Course at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, created during his professorship to provide university students with high-tech-start-up education. The education course also invited not only successful entrepreneurs but also a variety of speakers such as venture capitalists, lawyers, and ongoing entrepreneurs to provide a large view of startups.
On 1982, Shechtman discovered the icosahedral phase, which opened the new field of quasiperiodic crystals. Shechtman was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "the discovery of quasicrystals," making him one of six Israelis who have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.