InnoSpring Announces Corporate Partnership with Stanford Design School

SANTA CLARA, CA--(Marketwired - Mar 14, 2017) - InnoSpring, the leading Chinese innovation services provider, has embarked on an innovation challenge journey with Stanford Design School (d.school), joining the ME310 global family as a corporate sponsor. ME310 is a course focused on tackling design innovation challenges posed by global corporations in collaboration with leading global universities.

InnoSpring, with top academic partners China's Nantong University and Australia's Swinburne University of Technology Design Factory, will work with ME310 graduate students to focus on smart building design for 2017. As a corporate partner, InnoSpring provides students with a project framework as well as insights and knowledge to help them build skills and experience, leveraging its deep expertise and full-service innovation ecosystem in the smart building industry.

"The d.school's mission aligns closely with InnoSpring's mission to provide an ecosystem for global innovators," said Dr. Xiao Wang, chief fire starter and general manager, InnoSpring Silicon Valley. "Having built and honed an extensive knowledge base and US-China network, we look forward to taking this journey with the best and brightest researchers and corporations in the construction and Industrial IoT industries from US, China and Australia. We're also excited to leverage the 'design thinking' approach that the d.school has pioneered with this partnership and sharing our smart building and startup insights."

This project will take students to Nantong, China, where InnoSpring has a Smart Building Research Institute and running a pilot project showing the implementation of emerging Building IoT technologies within one of the buildings in the InnoSpring Nantong Science Park campus.

"We are grateful to have found in InnoSpring a synergistic partner that brings real-world global expertise and diversity that enriches our graduate program," said Larry Leifer, founding director at the Center for Design Research at Stanford University, Professor of Mechanical Engineering Design and principal instructor for the ME310 curriculum that engages InnoSpring. "The smart building design challenge is highly relevant for today's economic, social, political and cultural issues, with many opportunities to lead design principles in the creation of smart cities and buildings."

Since the 2012 opening of its first US-China incubator in Silicon Valley, InnoSpring has witnessed the power of disruptive products built under design thinking influence, some of which were built by its portfolio companies. InnoSpring has been leading the smart building innovation service ecosystem in China. Milestones include the formation of an industry alliance of construction, management and development corporations, and the funding and incubation of startups. InnoSpring also has strategic partnerships with Tsinghua University, Tongji University and Nantong University on technology productizing, and developed the Smart Building Research Institute.

About InnoSpring
Founded in 2012, InnoSpring derives its name from its Chinese origin, which means "the spring from which innovation flows." Headquartered in Shanghai, InnoSpring has grown rapidly and is today a global innovation services provider with businesses ranging from professional and technological innovation services, investment management, space solutions and regional, cross-border expansion. With a global vision and global networks, InnoSpring is devoted to building a worldwide integrated platform of end-to-end services for startups.

InnoSpring (Silicon Valley), a subsidiary of InnoSpring, is the first US-China technology startup incubator for globally-minded companies. InnoSpring strives to accelerate cross-border entrepreneurship and innovation in US, China and beyond by providing a nurturing startup ecosystem with a wide variety of supportive mentors, financing, and resources on both sides of the Pacific. Launched in April 2012, InnoSpring (SV) is located in Santa Clara, California, with an office in San Francisco. www.innospringus.com.

About Stanford d.school
The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford was founded in the School of Engineering in 2005 to prepare a generation of innovators to tackle the scale and complexity of the challenges facing the world today. Known on campus as the d.school, the institute brings students and faculty from radically different backgrounds together to develop innovative, human-centered solutions to real-world challenges. The transformative experiences of students and faculty have fueled the d.school's explosive growth. http://dschool.stanford.edu/