Promoting innovation to meet growing challenges
Technology is not the response to all issues but it can help reduce a number of problems faced by the masses in Pakistan.
Ideas such as social entrepreneurship, social mobility and by leveraging technology, it is possible to address problems ranging from poverty to education through sustainable and scalable programming, said experts at the conference titled ‘Pakistan’s First Innovation Forum’ organised by the Pakistan Innovation Foundation (PIF) at a local hotel on Thursday.
Participants from the industry, business, academia and government as well as innovators and entrepreneurs gathered and held sessions on corporate development, and educational innovation.
The overarching aim of the conference was to create a culture of problem-solving and help create an innovation eco-system in the country. In the development innovation session, Omer Ghani, managing director at the Enclude (Pvt) Limited, said that combination of demand and supply was the key to achieving targets, adding that innovation needed to go beyond definition now.
Among other speakers included Izhar Hunzai, the former CEO of Aga Khan Rural Support Programme, who said that talent and opportunities existed and they needed a platform to be put into practice.
Raheel Waqar, CEO at the White Rice Communication, emphasised on creating a platform where the best minds would be able to find social solutions. The second important thing is the practice to start accepting our failures and move on. During the event, many of the entrepreneurs were awarded prizes in the categories of agriculture and rural innovation, manufacturing innovation and learning innovation challenge worth more than Rs10 million.
The winners of Rs1,000,000 National Innovation Grand Challenge (NIGC) was Dr Tariq Mahmood of Institute of Space Technology (IST) who developed a semi-automatic Khaddi (Agri+Rural Innovation Prize) and Dr Akhtar Khalil (and his team iFahja) for his MySmartRemote smart-phone auto-theft device.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 17th, 2014.
Like Business on Facebook, follow @TribuneBiz on Twitter to stay informed and join in the conversation.
COMMENTS
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ