At a tech transfer conference in Amman, Jordan’s Princess Samaya gave a royal push to that country’s fledgling research commercialization efforts, citing “an urgent need now … to establish a Jordanian Innovation System.” Noting an abundance of research talent and infrastructure already in place, she urged research leaders there to begin thinking big. “What we want to hear is that the next Google, Cisco, Nokia and Samsung is coming from this region — Arab region — and I have no doubts about the capabilities of our talent and I believe this is inevitable. What we lack is a system that puts things in the right order,” Princess Sumaya said, kicking off the fourth annual Conference on Technology Commercialization, “Technology Transfer Research and Development and IP Commercialization, Policies, and Investment.”

“Whether it is a blue ocean strategy, diffusions of innovations, a Bayh-Dole Act, intellectual property law enforcement, technology readiness level, or others, the way ahead is clear and there is no better time than now to move ahead,” she emphasized. “The process should include the entire community and specifically a myriad of research institutions, governments and even large multinationals including economists, engineers, lawyers, marketers and scientists.” Princess Sumaya singled out the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE), part of El Hassan Science City, as a promising model for nurturing entrepreneurism in the academic community and fomenting a knowledge-based economy in Jordan.

Speaking at the same conference, past AUTM president John Fraser, assistant VP for research and economic development at Florida State University, called on Jordan to benefit from the American experience in tech transfer and engage aggressively in developing innovations from academia, spinning out companies from university research, creating clear policies and procedures, standardizing IP agreements, and establishing measurement systems to assess progress. Go to: ag-IP-news and ag-IP-news (2) .

Posted November 19th, 2008 under Tech Transfer

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