On May 19, DAEDEOKJABGU held its first event of the year at KAIST, during which renowned futurist Won Yong Cha gave a talk entitled “Future Technologies to Change the Future - Imagination Becomes Reality.”

DAEDEOKJABGU is a community that was formed last year by Chul Hwan Kim of the Key Initiatives of Technical Entreprenure (KITE) Entrepreneurship Foundation and Sung Dong Park of the Satrec Initiative, a company that provides solutions for Earth observation missions. Biweekly events gather people living in Daedeok for talks centered on DAEDEOKJABGU’s values of technology, ideas, and people (TIPs). Events were previously held at the National Science Museum in Daejeon. The official theme of DAEDEOKJABGU’s second season is “TIPs to connect.” 

Daedeok Valley is filled with highly educated researchers; however, they are often restricted to projects that could earn a grant, and must work within the framework of a research institute’s mission and role, regardless of their individual interests and skills. It is hoped that by providing a venue in which diverse individuals can gather and freely share their ideas, true open innovation could occur, even leading to business partnerships.

In his talk, Doctor Cha spoke about the flow of future technology up to the year 2030, when objects could potentially be created molecule-by-molecule. He further emphasized how it is important for Korean industries to shift their focus from devices to data and raw material - for example, Korean investment in three-dimensional printing is focused on the printers themselves rather than the materials that will be used to print. 

DAEDEOKJABGU meetings ahead will be on “Technologies for Disaster Management,” “Idea Entrepreneurship - Success and Failure,” “Leadership and Future Talent,” and “People and DAEDEOKJABGU.” They will be held at the same location, on the third floor of the Center for Creative Economy & Innovation (W8).