Bang & Olufsen looks to further expand into China

The Danish audio-visual products manufacturer Bang & Olufsen is counting on innovative designs with contributions from Chinese students to further expand into the Chinese market.

The brand set up an innovation camp recently on the campus of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, bringing together Danish and Chinese students for a two-week experiment on ideas and designs for new products catering to the Chinese market.

Thirty-six students from Denmark and China were separated into groups of five or six. The groups then met with Shanghai residents to discuss their ideas for new products.

"The Chinese market is so dynamic and large-scale," said Erik Kristiansen, a senior adviser from the School of Engineering of Aarhus University.

One of the students at the camp, Pelle Haukali Nielsen, a postgraduate student specializing in distributed systems and software engineering at Aarhus University, has worked on innovative projects with the construction toys manufacturer LEGO as part of his graduation project.