X-Garage: Unconditional Support Close at Hand
X-Garage opens shop in the basement of the International Studies Hall.
A space for cultivating future-oriented innovative intellectuals
with new perspectives and creative ideas
First there was π-Ville, dedicated to creating unlimited ideas and then Maker’s Space, a place to innovate through disruption and creation. Now Korea University has just introduced its latest center for creative innovation: X-Garage.
Following a tender process through the Korea On-line E-Procurement System last November and months of preparations, the roughly 1,372 square-meter (about 415 pyeong) space was opened in the basement of the International Studies Hall and presented in an opening ceremony on Monday, February 18, at 11:30 a.m.
With the slogan of “Unconditional Support Close at Hand,” the purpose of X-Garage is to expand explosively the idea base for start-ups while lowering barriers to entry. The aim is to make a significant contribution in establishing a college-centered startup ecosystem by cooperating with various startup-related organizations located within campus town through a startup support model based on “Crew-Runner-Builder” phases and a system for entry into a local community and private sector.
KU is the first university in Korea to open and operate an innovation center like π-Ville, a space exclusively for students to engage in various knowledge creation activities including job creation, creativity, and startups. The creativity education facility KU Maker’s Space, a follow-up to π-Ville, opened in the KU Innovation Building in July 2018. It is hoped that Maker’s Space (also known as X-Garage #1) will nurture creative intellectuals who possess the ability to think from various perspectives rather than drawing simple conclusions. It is a place for educational innovation to prepare for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
The name X-Garage is meaningful. Over in the US, garage startups are quite common and are in fact the birth place of many Silicon Valley startups. In that sense, garage startups have played major roles in nurturing successful companies. “X” is an unknown value often used in mathematics. It contains KU’s educational philosophy in terms of cultivating students’ abilities to create fresh ideas and to solve problems amid the uncertainties of the unknown and the unknown future ahead.
At the opening ceremony for X-Garage, KU President Jaeho Yeom said, “The smart IT industry such as that in Silicon Valley started from humble garages located in colleges. The important thing is not the garage itself but the spirit of the garage that values ideas and passion regardless of place. This is the real reason to establish X-Garage by symbolically renovating the garage of the International Studies Hall. I hope that the new future industry that will lead Korea and the world grows new shoots at X-Garage. Korea University supports that challenge.”