TİM Meets with Academics

Turkey's Exporters Assembly continues its efforts to bring a fresh perspective to "Turkey Innovation Week," an event that serves as a meeting point for the country's innovation ecosystem. Prior to the event taking place in April, TİM convened with rectors and deputy rectors from 28 universities—including Boğaziçi University Rector Prof. Mehmed Özkan, Koç University Rector Prof. Umran S. İnan, Marmara University Rector Prof. Erol Özvar, Istanbul University Rector Prof. Mahmut Ak, and Yıldız Technical University Rector Prof. Bahri Şahin—as well as general directors from 21 technoparks to gather academic perspectives on Turkey Innovation Week 2020. Participating rectors, technopark and technology transfer office directors, strategic partners of the event, TİM advisors, and representatives of the Innovation Committee shared their views to enrich the content of Turkey Innovation Week 2020.

TİM Chairman İsmail Gülle said they aim to expand the scope of Innovation Week this year and hold it in Istanbul in April.

İsmail Gülle continued his remarks as follows: "In planning Innovation Week, we place particular emphasis on gathering input from our academics and benefiting from the experience of our technoparks and technology cities, which are at the heart of operations, and we view them as natural stakeholders. The contributions they will make are of great importance for the success of our event. We look forward to your valuable support for active participation from technology parks, technology cities, technology transfer offices, incubation centers, research centers, innovation and entrepreneurship centers within our universities, and company representatives within them. We expect special effort from all our stakeholders to display successful, innovative and ambitious projects in the areas allocated to them. Our greatest wish is for at least one project conducted within university and technopark premises to be exhibited at booths," he said. İsmail Gülle stated: "Growth in our export volume combined with increases in value-added and quality, while raising the kilogram value, allows us to move beyond price competition. Our Innovation Week, which we have now made traditional and which has become Turkey's most comprehensive international event, therefore holds great significance for us. We have succeeded in creating an international ecosystem by bringing together international professionals, industrialists, academics, and university students who make a difference globally and in Turkey to Istanbul. On a global scale, numerous expert speakers and all companies operating in the name of innovation in Turkey have begun to come together under the Turkey Innovation Week umbrella. Over 7 years, we have hosted 710 speakers in total, 140 of whom are foreign and 570 domestic. Through strategic partnerships with Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, and France in different years, we have brought ecosystems together on a single platform and created grounds for potential business opportunities. Each year, our İnovaTİM students from 140 universities, numbering up to 3,000, have actively participated as volunteers. Just at last year's event, we featured more than 45 panels and conferences with 101 domestic and foreign speakers and welcomed 40,000 visitors. Last year's organization also saw participation from more than 30 Technoparks, Technology Cities, and Universities. We had the opportunity to monitor 6 exhibitions and installations. This year we aim to hold Innovation Week with even broader participation," he expressed his thoughts.