HSUHK MSc-DITM Orientation Day cum Cocktail Reception

 I am honor to be invited by Dr. Jack Wu and Prof. Daniel Mo as the chairperson of programme advisory committee for a new master programme in School of Decision Sciences, The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong (HSUHK). The new master programme, namely Master of Science in Digital Innovation and Technology Management (MSc-DITM) was launched in this year. The orientation day cum Cocktail Reception was held on 30^th Aug 2025.

Before the event, I met many friends and took some photos for memory. 

(Left: I, Prof. Daniel Mo, Prof. Chan Wai Sum, Dr. Ng Chi Hung Stephen and Prof. Samuel Chan)

Then I took a photo together with Dr. Jack Wu and Dr. YM Wong (HKIE).

Prof. Ng Chi Hung, Stephen (Head and Asso. Professor (SCM) MSc-GSCM Programme Director) started the Orientation Day.

Firstly, Prof. Chan Wai Sum (Dean, School of Decision Science) gave welcome speech and introduced the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong.

He briefly introduced HSUHK milestones from 1979 to 2025, and said that the School of Decision Sciences (SDSC) was established in 2014, the MSc-GSCM program was launched in 2019, and a new program MSc-DITM is launched in 2025.

And then Prof. Ng led everyone in a toast to celebrate.

After that Prof. Ng introduced their teaching faculty.

Industry Advisors of MSc-GSCM Programme (Global Supply Chain Management) were introduced.

Industry Advisors of MSc-DITM Programme (Digital Innovation and Technology Management) were introduced.

Then we received souvenir.

I met a new friend Ir Dannies Ho (Chairman, The Institute of Purchasing & Supply of Hong Kong) who served in Towngas.

After the break, I joined the MSc-DITM programme session. Prof. Daniel Mo chaired this session.

Rocky Lam who is my EngD cohort and we both are advisors in the programme. We took a photo together with Prof. Daniel Mo, Dr. Jack Wu and Dr. Cathy Lam.

Then introductory video was showed.

And then Dr. Jack Wu introduced their team.

Dr. Rocky Lam introduced his experience and company.

I also briefed my experience in HKSTP and observer of ISO TC 279 Innovation management.

The programme curriculum and requirements were briefed by Prof. Mo.

Lastly, I remembered Dr. Jack Wu who invited me before HKSQ exco meeting on 1^st Aug 2025and then Prof. Daniel Ng send me an invitation email on 3^rd Aug 2025.

(Photo taken by Dr. Jane Wong (chairman, HKSQ))

Thanks for inviting me and participating in this meaningful event.

Reference (related to Hang Seng Management College (HSMC))

20150721: The 1st Forum on Sustainable Development in Higher Education - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-1st-forum-on-sustainable.html

20160505: HSMC Seminar on Entrepreneurial Spirit and Sustainable Development Mindset - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2016/05/hsmc-seminar-on-entrepreneurial-spirit.html

Remember Peter Merrill, ASQ & ISO Innovation Professional

A very sad news received from Peter Merrill’s LinkedIn that Mr. Peter Merril passed away on 5 Jan 2025. On behalf of the Hong Kong Society for Quality (HKSQ), I would like to express my deepest condolences to Peter Merrill's family, friends and colleagues. It is very pity that we missed Global Innovation Guru in the world. When I first met Peter Merrill was in ASQ Fellow Lunch 2016 and then I attended his talk named “Self-Managed Team build an Innovation Culture” in ASQ World Conference on Quality and Improvement (WCQI) 2016.

I brought his books named “Innovation Never Stop” and “Do It Right The Second Time”. After that I used it as one of key elements in my innovation course for introducing innovation culture in universities.

In 2020, it was still in COVID period, I attended Peter Merrill’s Webinar entitled “ISO 56000 – Build innovation into your organization”.

Moreover, Peter Merrill was one of guest speakers for ISO Webinar on ISO 56001 and the Framework for Auditors for CB members on justification for ISO17021-x for IMS was held on 10^th July 2024.

ISO TC 279 LinkedIn posted that Peter Merrill was one of ISO Excellence Awardees during the celebration of the international launch of ISO56001 in Lima – Peru on 17^th Oct 2024. 

Peter Merrill was one of guru affected my Innovation journey. I remembered that he gave me advice when ASQ asked experts to join ISO TC 279. He told me that it needed to inform local government for nomination. Then I forwarded ASQ invitation letter to ITC, HKSAR and then they nominated me as the 1^st and only one Hong Kong observer in ISO TC 279 Innovation Management. I also quoted his contribution in my talk for HKSQ Quality Month Seminar entitled “Background and Requirements of ISO 56001 Innovation Management System”.

Remember Mr. Peter Merrill’s contribution on innovation management in ISO TC 279. RIP.

Reference:

Peter Merrill LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-merrill-b321768/

ISO Excellence Awards 2024 - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/iso-tc-279-innovation-management_iso56001-activity-7259852863277871104-ue_X?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

Message from Irene C. Makar - https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7288543797465006080/

Message from Hiro Nishiguchi - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hiro-nishiguchi-6b2816b7_iso56001-activity-7286723055039528961-pBU4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

Message from Rick Fernandez - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rick-fernandez-b66a123_my-deepest-condolences-to-peter-merrills-activity-7285317620742897664-sS9E/

20160515: ASQ Fellow Lunch 2016 - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2016/05/asq-fellow-lunch-2016.html

20160518: ASQ World Conference on Quality and Improvement (WCQI) 2016 – Day 3 - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2016/05/asq-world-conference-on-quality-and_18.html

20160916: My Innovation Journey - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2016/09/my-innovation-journey.html

20200728: Peter Merrill Webinar – ISO 56000 – Build innovation into your organization - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2020/07/peter-merrill-webinar-iso-56000-build.html

20240715: ISO Webinar on ISO 56001 and the Framework for Auditors - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2024/07/iso-webinar-on-iso-56001-and-framework.html

20241119: HKSQ Quality Month Seminar - “Background and Requirements of ISO 56001 Innovation Management System” - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2024/11/hksq-quality-month-seminar-background.html

HKSQ Quality Month Seminar - “Background and Requirements of ISO 56001 Innovation Management System”

Hong Kong Society for Quality (HKSQ) and Department of Computing (COMP), PolyU coorganized the World Quality Month Seminar named “Background and Requirements of ISO 56001 Innovation Management System” on 19^th Nov 2024. I was invited speaker and I am the first one and only one Hong Kong observer in ISO Technical Committee ISO/TC 279 – Innovation Management. Before the seminar, we took a group photo for memory. 

(Left: Dr. Jack Wu (HSUHK), Mr. CY Chan (CQO, DG Association for Quality), Mr. Keith Kwok (Ka Shui International Holdings Ltd.), Ms. Angela Wong (UL VS Hong Kong Ltd.), I, Dr. Aaron Tong (TQM Consultants Co. Ltd.), Dr. Jane Wong (HKSQ), Ms. Kelly Liu (DFI Retail Group), Dr. Miu Kai Kei, Kelvin (IP Mgr, PolyU) and Dr. Victor Lo (ISIHK)) (Remark: Ms. Minda Chiang help to take this photo)

In the beginning, I briefed the content of tonight’s talk.

Firstly, I introduced ISO/TC 279 – Innovation Management structure. Ms. Fan Zhang (张帆) (Vice-President, IIPA (Secretariat of SAC/TC554/SC2- Innovation Management Subcommittee)) is China representative to be member of ISO/TC 279. She focused on ISO 56005 - IP Management System. Hong Kong is under one country two system that ITC nominated me to be observer of ISO/TC 279 and I focused on ISO 56001 & ISO 56002 – Innovation Management System requirement and guideline.

Then I introduced eight Innovation Management Principles and I think culture is the most important principle.

Mr. Peter Merrill (Project Leader for ISO 56001) held webinar on ISO 56001 on 15^th July 2024 and identified some key clauses for discussion. We are both ASQ member and we met in ASQ conference in 2011 and 2016. 

And then I introduced Peter Merrill approach on Innovation Culture that he separated innovation in four stages and required different kind of talents. They are Creators (Find Opportunity), Connectors (Find Solution), Developers (Make the Solution Work) and Doers (Deliver the Solution).

Team Culture shift of those four roles in different stages. However, talents usually have more than one character that they could be changed their focus in different stages of project.

Thus, Peter Merrill’s approach could be realized in the Innovation Process of ISO 56001. Another similar approach was come from Design Thinking.

Finally, I proposed my old approach which is QMS based Innovation Management System to combine ISO 9001 model, CEN/TS 16555-1 Innovation Funnel and ISO 56002 model.

Actually, ISO 56001 IMS model has covered many of above elements. During Q&A session, I shared how to be nominated as ISO technical committee observer in Hong Kong. The most important was invited by ISO or relevant professional association such as ASQ. Dr. Aaron Tong (Former Chairman, HKSQ) is observer in ISO/TC 176 QMS and he was invited by HKIE.

Lastly, HKSQ exco members, members and guests took a group photo again. (Including my old EPA centre colleague Mr. Matthew Tsui (Right 2^nd) and my wife Ms. Minda Chiang (Left 4^th) 

At the end, we had dinner together. Dr. YC Chiu also joined us after his lecture in ISE Dept., PolyU.

Reference:

HKSQ - http://www.hksq.org/

Other related seminars:

20240715: ISO Webinar on ISO 56001 and the Framework for Auditors - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2024/07/iso-webinar-on-iso-56001-and-framework.html

20230914: International Forum on Innovation Management and Intellectual Property (創新管理與知識產權國際論壇) - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2023/09/international-forum-on-innovation.html

20230602: The Theme Salon of the international standard "Innovation Management - Intellectual Property Management Guidelines" - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-theme-salon-of-international.html

20230601: Webinar on Growing your Business with Innovation Management Standards - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2023/06/webinar-on-growing-your-business-with.html

20220616: ISO/TC 279 Innovation Management Virtual Meeting - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2022/06/isotc-279-innovation-management-virtual.html

20220223: Webinar: Using the ISO 56002 Innovation Management System - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2022/02/webinar-using-iso-56002-innovation.html

20200728: Peter Merrill Webinar – ISO 56000 – Build innovation into your organization - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2020/07/peter-merrill-webinar-iso-56000-build.html

20160515: ASQ Fellow Lunch 2016 - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2016/05/asq-fellow-lunch-2016.html

20160518: ASQ World Conference on Quality and Improvement (WCQI) 2016 – Day 3 - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2016/05/asq-world-conference-on-quality-and_18.html

PolyU COMP Seminar on Trends & Opportunities in AI and LFM

PolyU COMP 50^th Anniversary Distinguished Talk entitled “Trends and Opportunities in AI and Large Foundation Models” organized by Department of Computing, PolyU on 10^th Oct 2024. Prof. CHUA Tat-Seng (Chair Professor, School of Computing, National University of Singapore) was the guest speaker.

In the beginning, Prof. Chua briefed the history of AI since 1950. With the recent advancements in machine learning, particular in the emergence of large Large Foundation Model (LFM) would be the future direction. He introduced some great success of AI past case such as Deep Net, IBM’s Watson, AlphaGo, to LLMs.

And then Prof. Chua said LLMs with AGI attributes including domain versatility, output diversity, human-level semantic coherence and generative capability but some challenges we faced including hallucination, trust, safety and high cost. He also mentioned from LLMs to LFMs that multimodal tasks are current approach.

After that he discussed the evolution of smaller-sized LFMs and towards LFM-based agents to perform most functions that humans done. Prof. Chua briefed the key research directions of multimodal LFMs including multimodal alignment, alignment towards human value with trust & safety, multimodal agent, AI governance and policies, etc.

Finally, he introduced NExT-GPT’s human-machine interactions in a multimodal world. 

In order to avoid hallucination in visual instruction data, simple solution is to learn to see and analyze before answering that LFMs can develop manipulation ability from prior training (Grounding, OCR, Counting) and imitate human-like behaviors (Zoom in).

Mixture of AI Experts (MoAI) concept was introduced that employed multiple Cross-validation (CV) models as experts. And then he also introduced reinforcement learning with human and AI feedback. 

Lastly, Prof. CHUA Tat-Seng discussed from LFM-based agents to Network of Experts (NoE) overall architecture. In addition, “Quality assessment of LFM output is a neglected area of research but important towards self-reflective LFM” he said. At the end, he pointed out some key research topics such as LFM & Human brain relationship, super-alignment, leveraging human-machine intelligence and NoE framework.

Q&A session for both onsite and online

Group photo and souvenir presentation

Reference

COMP, PolyU - https://www.polyu.edu.hk/comp/

Leaflet - Trends and Opportunities in AI and Large Foundation Models

 

ISO Webinar on ISO 56001 and the Framework for Auditors

ISO Webinar on ISO 56001 and the Framework for Auditors for CB members on justification for ISO17021-x for IMS was held on 10^th July 2024. Since I missed the webinar, I reviewed the record of this webinar for member and summarized it on 15^th Jul 2024. In the beginning, Andrew Stanton (Convenor for Working Group 1, ISO TC 279 – Innovation Management) introduced the webinar content and schedule. 

He briefed the ISO 56001 project developed by ISO TC 279 – Innovation Management since 2020. ISO56002 guidance was published in 2019 and ISO56001 would be published in Sep 2024.

Mr. Peter Merrill (Project Leader for ISO 56001) was the guest speaker and his topic named “ISO 17021 for ISO 56001 Innovation Management”. He said innovation looks to future and deals with uncertainty. ISO 56002 guidance standard was not sufficient so that ISO 56001 is for certification and designed for integration with a QMS.

Then Mr. Peter Merrill discussed the clauses of ISO 56001:2024 that focused on the added clauses including 5.3 Strategy, 5.4 Culture, 6.4 Portfolio, 6.5 Structure, 6.6 Collaboration, 8.2 Initiatives, 8.3 Innovation Process, 4.3.1 Innovation Intent, 5.1.3 Change Management and 7.1.2-7 Time, Finance, People, Knowledge, & IP.

After that Peter Merrill explained the innovation strategy to show the objectives and provide necessary support, as well as, setting tactical objectives, etc.

Top management should promote a culture of innovation, and auditors can ask questions regarding auditable evidence of a culture of innovation.

And then Peter Merrill discussed the innovation process in 5 steps: 1 Opportunity, 2 Concept, 3 Validate, 4 Develop and 5 Deploy. 

Finally, he mentioned some unique factors of IMS such as “Auditors adjust their thinking as the strategy evolves.”

Lastly, he introduced different innovation tools and summarized that CEO’s focus on innovation as the competitive edge; and challenges to be made innovation more efficient and effective.

Mr. Willy Fabritius (Liaison for IIOA, IAF) was the second guest and he discussed topic named “Framework for Auditors – The Certification Body Perspective”. Firstly, he stated some unique factors of innovation management and then compared it with ISO 17021-x skills and knowledge including “Strategic thinking”, “Culture elements”, “Structures”, “Portfolio”, “Collaboration”, “IP Management”, “Processes”, “Measurements”, “Innovation terms” and “Tools and methods”.

Finally, he mentioned the ISO 17021-x clauses related to conformity assessment such as 7.1 Competence of personnel and 9 Process requirements, as well as, Annex A.

The Q&A session was moderated by Mr. Andrew Stanton, with Mr. Peter Merrill and Mr. Willy Fabritius discussing questions from the audience.

Reference

ISO / TC 279 - https://committee.iso.org/home/tc279

Mr. Peter Merrill - https://questmgt.com/

Mr. Willy Fabritius - https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabritius/