Could you introduce UTCC to our readers and your unique relationship with the Thai Chamber of Commerce?

We are a private, non-profit university, the oldest in Thailand, and we belong to the Thai Chamber of Commerce.  Initially, the committee wanted to have a school to would educate their kids and continue the family business. Our philosophy since then has remained the same: we focus on business and we are the biggest business school in Thailand.

Producing graduates is not our only mission; we also have to serve the Thai Chamber of Commerce in their research, when they have something to comment on with regards to government policy. We have many research centres including the centre for business and economic forecasting. For example, we were the first group to produce a consumer price index for Thailand, which became one reference to measure the Thailand’s consumption. Even the Bank of Thailand quotes our index. Our research is independent, and we have our academic freedom. The Thai Chamber of Commerce is the only one in the world that has its own university, and our students work with member companies through internships and work experience.

As we are non-profit, any profits go back to society, so our mission is to serve the people. The Thailand Chamber of Commerce is moving forward with Thailand’s 4.0 and we must change ourselves as a university in support of this.

In the last 2 years, we have been working on two main developments. First is the collaboration with Alibaba: we’re the only university that has a training center with 26 certified Alibaba trainers. We recently changed the curriculum, now all of our first year students …have to take what is called Innovation Driver Entrepreneurship.  We have also started to train students for free and last year we trained 1,200 students and almost 500 SMEs. When I first visited Alibaba, I saw so many opportunities for Thai SMEs: we want to help them become more competitive. I have seen in Hangzhou small businesses based in villages who don’t need to come to the big cities, through Alibaba they sell their products all over the world.

The second development is entrepreneurship development, where we are collaborating with MIT from Boston. Our students are inspired to become entrepreneurs, not for big companies, and we have to support them. If we combine the value of all the businesses the MIT Alumni and current students founded together, the value of their companies would make for the 10th largest economy worldwide. MIT alumni, professors and current students have created around 4.5 million jobs.

It’s not only about teaching the students but also turning those students and alumni into founders of new companies.

We have an IDE center here and have joined with MIT regional entrepreneurship acceleration program (MIT reap) to help create an eco-system where we nurture Thai entrepreneurs.

While we are talking about IDE, how do you help support students decide on their desired field of business?

Students need innovative thinking and they need ideas. We adopted the 24 steps of discipline and entrepreneurship, which we learnt, from MIT. The way they teach at MIT is that we have to look at the problem, it could be a problem for a customer or a problem in our society, and then the product or technology comes after that. We started taking our students out of the campus rather than confining them to the classroom. They go out to the local community where there are local markets, and a mixture of all types of businesses and they observe and come back and propose what they would like to do. It’s great to see our first year students coming up with really good ideas.

What is your vision for UTCC?

We want to be a unique and practical university. Also you may have learned the environment is changing so much in the education sector. We have to expand outside Thailand, and that is why we opened the MBA offshore program in Yangon and Mandalay.

What is your final message to our readers?

As I mentioned before we are a non-profit university so we are more like a social enterprise university. At this moment, Thailand is struggling to get out of the middle-income trap so the whole country is focusing on strategy 4.0 but it is not easy.

I have to prepare our students to support Thailand 4.0 and that is why I brought in Alibaba. They have to be capable regards E-Commerce and follow a digitalized world and be innovation driven. For the Thai Chamber of Commerce, we have to support them and I am confident that we can help Thailand achieve its goal.