Out-of-the-box Proposals...
- 27.10.2014
- Archive
Economic competition is gradually increasing across the world. Grabbing a bigger share in the global economy is getting more difficult by the day. Even darker days are awaiting countries with low educational quality and knowledge, weak R&D capacity and insufficient innovation and design power.
The universities, academic institutes and research centers in our country have a lot of responsibility in this regard. While nobody imagines that universities will continue to exist as they have done so far, it becomes increasingly indispensible in this new process that universities cooperate way more strongly with industry in a result-oriented manner.
In this context, we are observing how universities in developed countries cooperate with industry as they achieve remarkable developments and gain dynamism for transformation. Countries that have so far laid emphasis on cooperation between universities and industry and invested in this field early on reap the fruits. For instance, as of 2013, there are 37 American, 28 EU and 22 Japanese companies among the top 100 world companies with highest investment in R&D. And it is not a coincidence that 25 out of these top 100 companies doubled their annual profits in a decade.
We should now bring onto our agenda out-of-the-box proposals for cooperation between universities and industry that is different from those in the past and which is healthy, effective and sustainable.
We should now assess the creation of a "league of distinguished universities" in Türkiye. In addition, we also observe how research universities and teaching universities are separate across the world. Such separation of universities in our country is now indispensible...
"Industry Platform" has scored successful progress in such a brief time. Led by Istanbul Chamber of Industry in cooperation with 5 long-established state universities in Istanbul, the platform breeds hope for the abovementioned issues and towards the solution of problems of our industrialists.
Erdal Bahçıvan
Istanbul Chamber of Industry
Chairman of the Board