Yesterday, Seven Hills client James Chen, the Hong Kong philanthropist and investor, brought together world-leading innovators for the first in a series of curated brainstorm events to find new solutions to the number one disability in the world – poor vision.
The first ‘Clearly Lab’ event took place at MakerBay in Hong Kong, convening 30 creative minds and data experts to address the fact that there are 2.5 billion people around the world suffering from poor vision with no means of improving it.
Participants at the event included Norman Tam, Head of Taiwan and Hong Kong Office at Tencent; Yet Siu, Founder of digital media firm Outblaze; Chandra Nair, Founder and CEO of think-tank The Global Institute for Tomorrow; Cesar Harada, Director of MakerBay, and Kelvin Cheung, COO of Hong Kong’s first co-working space dedicated to social innovation GoodLab among others.
The Clearly Labs are a core element of the Clearly campaign, a global movement launched last month by James Chen to rethink the approach to world vision. Subsequent events will take place later in the year in key locations around the world, including New York, Silicon Valley and London.
Another core element of the campaign is the Clearly Vision Prize, an ideas competition for entrepreneurs, scientists and innovators with a prize fund of $250,000 USD of seed funding and mentoring to get the best ideas off the ground. The competition closes for entries on 18th July.
Following the launch of the Clearly campaign in April, Seven Hills led the media outreach surrounding the Hong Kong Clearly Lab, securing interviews with Bloomberg Business Week, South China Morning Post Magazine and China Daily.