GOIC and Carnegie Mellon University announce partnership

The MOU was signed by Dr. Ahmed Khalil Al-Mutawa, Secretary General of GOIC and S. Thomas Emerson, Director of Donald H. Jones Center for Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University.

The first initiative in the partnership will be an executive education program focusing on industrial entrepreneurship. Carnegie Mellon will design a Gulf-oriented training program; the first of its kind in the region, to transfer its expertise in technology-based entrepreneurship and innovation to entrepreneurs and people concerned with developing small-scale ventures in both the private and public sectors within GCC member states. In its turn, the program fulfills one of GOIC's top priorities; to develop small business in the GCC, particularly industrial projects. GOIC will market and promote this program in collaboration with potential partners in the region who are concerned with developing local entrepreneurs and other parties concerned with helping youth in developing their future projects.

Studies indicate that most of the small-scale projects fail at their initial stages; where 50% of the small-scale ventures fails in their first year where as over 90% fail to continue after their fifth year; this is all due to immaturity of ideas and lack of planning.

In 2004, the number of small-scale ventures (investing less than US D 2 millions) in GCC member states was estimated to some 6070 ventures, i.e. 65% of the total number of ventures. The investment size in those ventures is around US D 3.7 billion, i.e. 3.6% of the total transformational industries investment which is around US D 103 billion.

It is worth highlighting that GOIC is a leading industrial consulting organization offering professional services, and playing a key role in the development of the industrial sector in GCC by means of deploying an integrated approach. On the other hand Carnegie Mellon is a private research university with a distinctive mix of programs. The university opened a branch in Qatar in 2004 offering undergraduate degrees in business administration and computer science.