Dr Tan Zhi, Partner of Northern Light Venture Capital, delivered a distinguished seminar on "Red Ocean to Blue Ocean: Transforming Today’s Businesses” on 25 March, 2010. The seminar attracted around a hundred audiences including professors, undergraduate and postgraduate students.

At the seminar, Dr Tan shared with the audience how businesses (in and elsewhere) are transforming from using " Red Ocean " strategy focusing on pricing competition to "Blue Ocean" strategy where innovation plays a central role in their competitiveness.

He explained the “Blue Ocean” strategy with the real example of Framedia. He said Framedia grew to become the market leader in China's media industry, by using innovative ideas to set new rules that revolutionized an existing industry.

A number of forum speakers were invited to join the seminar too. They shared views and ideas on engineers in today’s business world. The forum speakers included HKUST President Prof Tony CHAN; HKUST Acting Vice-President for Research & Development Prof Matthew YUEN; Prof Vincent SHEN from Department of Computer Science & Engineering, HKUST; Prof Pascale FUNG from Department of Electronic & Computer Engineering, HKUST; Chairman of Perception Digital Holdings Ltd. Prof Jack LAU and MPhil Student Mingyu WANG from Department of Electronic & Computer Engineering, HKUST.

About Dr Tan Zhi

Dr TAN Zhi was CEO and director of Focus Media from Mar 2007 to Jan 2009. Prior to this position, Dr Tan was Chairman and CEO of Framedia. Under his leadership, Framedia grew from 30M RMB to near 700M in revenue, and the market share reached to 95%. The company then was acquired by Focus Media for 183 million USD in 2005. The acquisition lead Focus Media to several major acquisitions successfully and therefore become the landmark deal in the media field. He received his PhD in Computer Science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute of Massachusetts in 1987 and a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Jilin University in China in 1980.