Starts With 150 Gifted Students and Selects 20 Projects to Provide Consulting Support
King Abdulaziz and His Companions Foundation for Giftedness and Creativity "Mawhiba" and the Small and Medium Enterprises General Authority "Monsha’at", launched a partnership program which is the first of its kind in the Kingdom. This program aims to train gifted students of "Mawhiba" for entrepreneurial skills to enable them, in the future, to transform their scientific research and projects into entrepreneurial projects that have an added value to the nation’s economy and to provide them with consultations, starting from the birth of the idea until the launching of the project as a product to the market.
This partnership between "Mawhiba" and "Monsha’at" targets 150 students of "Mawhiba's students, who participated in the National Olympiad (Ibdaa 2020), where they are subjected to a 4-days training program that includes several programs and lectures, including a training to transform the idea into Intellectual property provided by the Saudi Authority for Intellectual Property, and training on converting Intellectual Property into a commercial project provided by Baseqat Consultancy. In addition, there are two training programs provided by "Monsha’at" to introduce the commercial project to the market and services that can be obtained from Monsha’at after the launch of the project.
After the end of the program, "Monsha’at" will select 20 projects from the participating projects, which it sees the possibility of launching in the market, provide consultancy services to them and assist them in marketing their ideas and projects.
His Excellency Dr Saud bin Saeed Al-Mat’hami, Secretary-General of "Mawhiba", asserted that the strategic goal of this partnership is to establish and build a success story to build the innovation system, as Mawhiba is concerned with generating ideas, which is the first stage of this system, whereas Monsha’at is concerned with sponsoring the emerging enterprises and entrepreneurship, which has become an important tributary of sustainable development, which is what "Mawhiba" seeks to make this community of compatriots a real source of support for the Saudi economy. He pointed out that this partnership is considered one of the most important steps to support the ideas and research of "Mawhiba" students, to enable them to transform their ideas into products of value, and to provide consultancy support for these ideas in a way that leads the gifted students of the nation to design their research and projects, not only for competitions but as a dream to become future investment projects that contribute to achieving the goals of 2030 Vision.
He added: "Humanity is on the threshold of a new era, in which human capital, innovation, creativity and inspiring ideas play a large and prominent role in supporting the global creative economy, which is based in its essence on the creativity and innovation industry, and achieving leadership in business and human achievements, relying on reason, thought, talent and creativity, which is what the second axis of the Kingdom's 2030 vision focused on, emphasizing on providing opportunities for all, through an educational system linked to the needs of the labour market, and increasing the contribution of SMEs in the gross domestic product to 35% by the year 2030 ".
For his part, Eng. Saleh bin Ibrahim Al-Rashid, Governor of Small and Medium Enterprises General Authority "Monsha’at" said: "We are working through this partnership with "Mawhiba" to contribute to enhancing the skills of these creative students, and to enable them to transform their projects and research into projects of economic value in the future, especially in light of the importance of developing entrepreneurial skills in students from childhood, to learn the basics of transforming their creative ideas into products of economic value in society. "
Al-Rasheed added: "This partnership is the cores of a partnership that, God willing, will expand upon after benefiting from this first experience, and measuring various aspects, so that it includes all Mawhiba’s students, as these are the people on whom the country depends in the future, to be partners in the process of qualitative development."
