Fifth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Symposium held in Doha

The main theme of the symposium, which was inaugurated by a welcome speech by H.E. Dr. Lulwa A. Al Misned, Assistant Secretary General for Industrial Investment Promotion, was the "Impacts of Innovation and Technology Management on Entrepreneurship".

The symposium comes within the framework of Intekno Group's Corporate Social Responsibility Programme initiated in June 2006, in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University and prominent Turkish Universities such as Bosphorus, Koc and Sabanci.

The objective of the symposium series is to create a platform and a microclimate for young people to streamline entrepreneurship methodologies and inject innovation techniques into their start-up ventures. Intekno Group paid a special attention to have a 'rotating' nature so that at every six month period each symposium is held at a different university, aiming to evenly transfer knowledge and experience.

On its turn, a major part of GOIC`s mission is to nurture innovation as a key ingredient for industrial diversification and development, as the organization has been intensely involved in the development of a common industrial strategy for the GCC, and just recently launched a Strategic Plan for the development of knowledge based industries in the GCC region, working towards identifying the individual country based strategies for the GCC states, further to its key role in fostering and promoting SMEs which are considered the growing grounds for entrepreneurship initiatives.

According to Dr. Al-Misned,

"Our vision is to see GOIC becoming the platform for a lucrative dialogue between the various stakeholders involved in the development of the industrial and other economic sectors of the region, so as to interact and integrate in strengthening the culture of entrepreneurship, locally, regionally and internationally. We are here today to initiate the work towards promoting innovation as a key ingredient for entrepreneurship and efficient technology management, and as a necessary tool for maintaining the sustainability of entrepreneurial industrial projects." H.E. reported."

The symposium agenda included presenting a number of papers by speakers from Bosphorus University, Middle East Technical University, GOIC, Carnegie Mellon University- Qatar, and Intekno Group. The subject papers tackled issues like Technology & Quality Management Systems for Effective Entrepreneurship, Role of GOIC in building an Entrepreneurship Society in GCC, A Tale of Entrepreneurship: Global and Local Perspectives, From Brains to Businesses, and Design and Innovation.

According to the Chairman of Intekno Group, Mr. Halil Kulluk,

"Qatar's impressive investment climate with emphasis on education and desire to create an entrepreneurship society attracted us to hold the symposium in Doha." He also added that "GOIC is a unique and a very effective platform in the Gulf region and the group felt it was important to join forces with the organization."

This symposium is the first to be conducted outside Turkey with the participation of faculty members from Bosphorus University in Istanbul and Middle East Technical University in Ankara.

It is worth mentioning that GOIC and Intekno Group are planning to conduct training courses specialized in business entrepreneurship. The courses target developing entrepreneurs, especially youths initiating their own business and providing them with the proper background for implementing their ideas; specially the projects which are based on innovation.

They also handle technology transfer systems and global entrepreneurial network, and cover the entire venture creation process from idea generation to building viable global businesses.