Global Imperial: The future of Turkish innovation

good evening welcome i'm very pleased to be here with you this evening and uh it's almost a year since we planned our we were to visit you in person and we're very sorry not to be there in istanbul with you or elsewhere in turkey and we hope you're all doing uh very well this is a wonderful opportunity though and we're so pleased to have so many of you connecting with us this evening as you are well aware imperial college london is the uk's most international university and we're very proud of our highly international staff our students and our alumni and our collaborations throughout the world make imperial a powerhouse in research education and innovation so we're really pleased to be here with our wonderful community in turkey and beyond to have this discussion with an outstanding panel of guests including our own alumnus bhulin ashibashi chairman of edubashi holding this evening we will explore the evolving innovation system in turkey uk turkey business relations and opportunities for future collaboration now it's a great topic for imperial and our panel tonight as we have very strong connections to turkey we routinely have over 80 students studying at imperial from turkey and over 20 of our staff members are also from turkey and we have a very large and very talented alumni base around the world we have important collaborations too over the past five years we've co-authored over 450 publications with turkish partners in universities and research institutes imperial college is also the uk's most innovative university and routinely ranked second or third in europe we're forging new ground in fostering student entrepreneurship developing incubators hackathons and scale-up opportunities for fledgling businesses so it is my absolute pleasure to introduce our panelists our speakers tonight so we can get on to our discussion of innovation so first my my co-host uh boolean bay uh it's wonderful too thank you um after graduating uh from imperial uh bulant studied chemistry and imperial and after he graduated in 1972 he took a master of science in chemical engineering at mit that makes us fellow chemical engineers that's right and uh and he began working of course for the the business at shabashi holding founded by his father nejad ajabashi today this group's biggest brand is perhaps the very familiar to many vitra a which produces and exports sanitary wear bathroom furniture brass wear and ceramic tiles and exports those to more than 80 countries so a true uh global leader uh bullet's forward-looking recent book a rip in the sea new responsibilities for business sets the stage for this entrepreneurial alumnus to help lead our discussion this evening you also know that bullan and his wife hoya have a personal passion in art and design oya is chair of the istanbul modern art foundation which bullet founded and blend is the chairman of the istanbul foundation for culture and arts the istanbul art biennale and its associated design biennale and we very much look forward to those events we're joined uh this this evening by dr ferrat gluter a senior lecturer in the department of bio bioengineering at imperial working at the interface of material science electronics computing chemistry and biology a true multi-disciplinary person he leads the gouda research group which focuses on the research and discovery of new materials development of sensors actuators and their transformation into useful systems for use in healthcare agriculture and food sciences freeride is an inventor of and holds multiple patents and he's co-founded four startups based on his research so we will have a very good discussion about that we have our other alumnus uh humphrey hatton who graduated from imperial in 1984 with a degree in metallurgy and material science and he's a partner of deloitte in the uk from 2016 to mid-2020 he was based in istanbul as ceo of deloitte turkey while in turkey he was a board member of the british chamber of commerce turkey and he works worked closely with the department of international trade to promote trade and investment activities between the two countries before moving to turkey he spent over five years in dubai as ceo of deloitte corporate finance for the middle east and during his studies in london humphrey was a keen rower and went on to compete for england in the commonwealth games in 1986. so it's wonderful to have you all here and bullock bay with your interesting story which i think frames are uh our topic of innovation and uh your entrepreneurial pathway uh is a very inspiring one so i wonder if you could share with us a few of your memories uh how how did you find yourself coming to imperial uh when you studied chemistry there uh and lived in london uh what were your experiences and how how did that set you off on the wonderful career you've had thank you professor agass thank you very much for this introduction it's a great pleasure to be with you at the imperial community through this online event um well the decision to study chemistry uh and study chemistry at imperial um first of all it really did not have anything to do with our family business but it was because of my deep interest in physical sciences and maths how did i decide to study at imperial college the long and short of it is that my father decided it for me i had graduated from a german school i was top of my class i received a grant from the german government to study in germany i was going to be independent of my family i was looking forward to it but my father said no no enough german you have to study in england get to know a different culture and also you have to learn good english the german school english is not good enough so i applied to cambridge university and imperial college to study chemistry i got accepted and i didn't know what to do because i was so hypnotized by the reputations of both universities my father didn't have any doubts and made the decision right away he said higher education is not about getting a university diploma you have to use your time to become a cultured person and there's no better place for that than london one of the greatest cultural centers of the world you have to go to imperial college so that's what i did if you allow me president guest i'll insert a little advertisement for our chemistry department here especially for young students interested in following a course in chemistry imperial college at imperial college as a as a great tradition of excellence in teaching and research in chemistry which goes back to mid 19th century to the origins of imperial college as the royal college of chemistry many important names were well known to chemists were either students or professors at imperial college like the famous german professor august wilhelm hofmann who was the first professor at the royal college of chemistry sir edward franklin known as the father of organometallic chemistry and sir william perkins father of the british livestock industry of course the important thing is not that the history of the department is glorious but that the tradition of excellence has been continued it is always ranked among the top chemistry schools in the world and with the top three or four in europe with oxford cambridge and ethereus so um i think uh my father made the right decision so you uh you were studying at imperial when there was a nobel prize announced can you relate that day and how that might be yes professor barton got the nobel prize in chemistry for his work in conformational analysis in organic chemistry i cannot remember any celebrations when professor barton got his nobel prize i cannot even remember any announcements we just found out maybe there was a cocktail reception given by the organic chemistry department in one of their labs where people stood around in their white coats sipping sherry but naturally we poor undergraduates were not invited professor barton gave his regular lectures and it was as if the nobel prize was something that was expected to happen as an ordinary event every year but i remember disappointing professor barton on one occasion our most important exams were at the end of the second year covering the courses of the first two years and in the third year we were expected to specialize in one of the major branches of chemistry i came first in organic chemistry in our second year exams and i was awarded the hofmann prize the hoffman prize was a book of my choice that i would purchase and the college would reimburse me for it so i bought a book and took it took it to professor barton the chair of the organic department for him to sign as i was supposed to do he stood up shook my hand congratulated me took the book and saw the title it was this book is quantum mechanics by linus pauling he said he saw the book and said aren't you going to join the organic chemistry department i said no i want to do physical chemistry because i want to get my master's degree in chemical engineering he said well all right it's a pity but i'll sign it anyway so that's his signature and the price of the book two pounds 45. so this book is one of my most precious possessions we must not forget to mention professor jeffrey wilkinson uh chair of our inorganic chemistry department who received the nobel prize for research in complex of transition metals in 1973 the year after we graduated he was a completely different character always laughing and making jokes his lectures were a lot of fun he was also the author of the most famous textbook of advanced inorganic chemistry which students all over the world had to read nobel prize winners become famous but there were many exceptional researchers in addition to professor barton and professor wilkinson in our department and now i know there still are indeed and uh while much has changed i think much has remained consistent the rigorous education and the inspiring staff to interact with and that's a that's a wonderfully inspiring story because you were in the midst of these nobel laureates and you were in these great scientists yet you also had your own direction you know what you wanted to do and uh and i'd like to think that physical chemists and chemical engineers can do anything and you've certainly shown that you've been able to navigate so perhaps turning a bit to how those experiences at imperial helped shape your early your professional career then as you moved uh after your uh masters at mit and you moved into the family business i did not take any technical responsibilities when i entered the family business instead i thought it was time for me to learn as much as i could and as fast as i could about business management and all the related subjects such as finance economics marketing human resource management and so on but r d and innovation were big subjects on my mind because turkish industry was entering a stage where competitiveness was becoming a life and death issue as opposed to earlier times when the turkish economy was closed uh there was very little competition and all kinds of technology was imported mainly through license agreements and sometimes with joint ventures so we were thinking about how to get innovation technology development and r d started and begin differentiating ourselves not through lower prices in international markets but through innovation as much as possible in the initial stage of our efforts we focused on design we were moderately successful but it is design is not a sufficiently differentiating factor since everybody is trying to compete on design especially in our business developing new technologies in a very traditional business such as our bathroom business is a more difficult but more promising route to achieving competitive advantages and this task is still continuing today yes that's very similar in some ways to higher education and how the university needs to retain those core principles and the core values and the great uh strengths of our disciplines but also branch out and move into new areas and i think that that's part of our innovation ethos and i'd like to think that imperial has a particularly strong culture in that regard i'm not sure who inspired you throughout your career um clearly your early your professors at imperial were a big influence on you do you have others well i must say my main sources of my professors at imperial certainly i uh i remember many of them maybe all of them but in my life as a business man my sources of inspiration were mainly again my father and his generation of businessmen were pioneers of the turkish industry what they had in common was a great optimism for the country's future and the the belief that the country's problems were solvable through good governance immense admiration for what kamala turk had done and total commitment to his ideas the confidence which they derived from having established successful businesses under extremely difficult conditions of scarcity and poverty a very strong sense of social responsibility and their belief that it was their responsibility to solve all the problems the country had they were a handful of extremely talented energetic and wise business leaders who founded not only great businesses but also many key institutions of our civil society i have tried to tell their the stories in my book that you mentioned rip in the sea i think that's a very important point and a very fascinating uh thing that we we learn from um these great people who who have passion and commitment um and that's probably one of the main themes for entrepreneurs that it's that passion and commitment that makes such a difference i'd like to thank imperials showing that same evolution as and it's been wonderful to be back in touch with you as we've moved from the strength of our 19th century roots in chemistry through those nobel laureates and other great people and developing new fields developing biochemistry in a very big way and now to moving uh to our new uh and state-of-the-art fabulous new building the molecular sciences hub in our white city campus and as we told you and and we can't wait to show you physically um that community is is really thriving in a collaborative way that brings new technology robotics and automation and high-level computing together to create new materials to develop new frontiers for chemistry and for chemistry applied to medicine to agriculture to material science and many things in the future and so um i i really was inspired by your own uh commitment and direction and i think that that's something we can learn from as we're forging new directions in the university thank you professor guest it's also a wonderful for me to connect with you and your colleagues at the imperial college after so many years i still have some classmates with whom i communicate very few unfortunately but i hope through this event i will uh connect with many others uh and maybe we can do something also to um give a new uh energy to the turkish organization of ice alumni um at some point at one time in the past they were extremely active i'm not so sure at the moment but uh we i think there is something we can do about that yes i think that uh it is a very strong community a very uh intelligent and resourceful community and we look forward to pulling them together and i know that they will be eager to connect with you uh perhaps after this event and i do want to turn our our discussion towards uh innovation in turkey today um and uh where you see it heading but perhaps we should uh talk to uh fira and humphrey first and then pull it back uh into that framework and and um uh fira um ferret's done some really marvelous work in in so many different areas as i mentioned a founder of four companies and and many patents um one thing that uh firat did that i know he won't want to spend the whole time on today but uh it's been critical that our entire campus and and many people have taken their years of fundamental research and pivoted to uh working on uh coronavirus uh and the kova 19 pandemic and fira developed an extremely brilliant uh pcr on a chip uh device that i might ask him to uh tell us about briefly uh as as among our colleagues who have worked on detection on epidemiology and modeling on understanding the virus and understanding its mutations now and obviously on vaccines and therapies and treatments so fear i could could i just get you to indulge me a little bit and tell the community a bit about the coveted work and then want to turn to some of your other ideas um hi alice thank you so we i moved to imperial approximately five years ago and um you know i had so many ideas that i kind of wanted to explore i noted over time that you know they were essentially gaps in technology where uh um we really needed these things but they were not getting enough attention and and the pcr work that that that we that the pcr technology that we developed it was one of these ideas that i noted that genetic detection technologies are very important but they have been mainly limited to to the laboratory setting so um and and we um were lucky enough to receive some funding uh um from the welcome trust and then to start developing this idea where i tried to come up with a truly low cost and and portable system to detect infectious diseases and i try to kind of pick it because pic very tough constraints economic constraints mainly and started working on this idea for the detection of disease in animals because unlike human life you know there is a price for an animal in fact in scotland a ship costs approximately 60 pounds so and then so we tried to come up with truly low cost technologies and um so we started working on this idea um roughly four years ago and then the coveted pandemic happened and uh we essentially just repurposed this technology for for that but again as you mentioned this is a uh it's a small part of what we mainly do my my lab broadly focuses on the invention of new class new classes of low-cost sensors to interface the world around us with with machines and we apply these the technologies developed in my in my lab to address some of the most pressing issues in in the world uh such as you know challenges in detection detecting infectious pathogens or reducing food waste or to to um improve uh environmental sustainability especially in the in in the agricultural sector where um um environmental sustainability is a huge issue so um but in addition to our our research and and which we're obviously very passionate about we would like to as a group we would like to see the ideas go from the basic prototypes uh essentially we want to go from just playing around with things to uh to systems and ideas that generate societal impact and and obviously we do this through translational activities so since i moved to imperial um the training in innovation and entrepreneurship have been an integral part of the the uh the training that i i give to my the members of my my research team so um and it i have realized that this tradition and initially people come to the lab they may not have so much of an idea or interest in doing this but and then once you know they get exposed to this culture um both in my lab and and broadly at imperial they do realize that this is very exciting to take an idea and then turn it into something that can be used by others and and and have an impact so um and and this has led to formation of multiple startups from my lab including black bear on hinder and fruit and spirus and um and these companies are of course they're science-based companies they require a lot of investment early on to develop the ideas into products and they still need to do their own research and interestingly two of these companies are led by or called by turkish students which kind of shows that the the culture of innovation is is in the blood of of of of uh uh turkish people because we kind of get exposed to this from very early on and and given the opportunity um uh students can really flourish and take the ideas forward and then and of course i don't i don't find this to be to be very surprising and once the opportunity and support is there um the ideas can can really flourish and the students can really start taking responsibility and and and lead these efforts that's that's fabulous and i think you're right we have such incredibly uh innovative uh students and our our turkey students are very entrepreneurial and it's exciting to see you succeeding with them and bringing that innovation and entrepreneurial spirit into their own studies um it's also very exciting that many of your inventions or innovations are low cost and thus such as the tests that will be available to low and middle income countries and i imagine that uh motivates certain students as well and it'd be interesting to talk a bit about how you balance that low-cost innovation with making a successful business out of it and a successful startup i i think historically low-cost has been thought of more poor quality but i think this is changing through smart smart engineering for exam a good example for this is probably electronics they are state of the art systems and and yet they cost nowadays uh um you know few few dollars to make uh these very advanced systems so um i think the perception is it's changed and uh what we really try to do is um think uh think in a way that perhaps people overlooked and and uh so how can we do this uh um you know in this simplest way possible without sacrificing the um the performance of of the ideas and of course this requires a lot of thinking a lot of reading and a lot of failure but eventually um we do come up with ideas that that we think may be successful but again this is the this is part of innovation or entrepreneurship that not every idea will be successful and and some ideas again will fail and we're we're definitely you know that's again part of the training that my students get which is that some ideas will fail and um it may not be even even that the idea is bad it's just the timing may be wrong or there might be other factors but again it's just just part of the training and we try to come up with low cost and high performance systems and we kind of try to see if if um indeed they are as valuable as as we thought we they would be and we basically start doing our homework to translate them that's great i think great entrepreneurs learn from their failures and build upon that experience don't they exactly and again i think when this happens to to people maybe the first time they kind of get surprised by this but as an academic you know i fail all the time and then they see that i fail and i continue on and hopefully this is a bit contagious that they learn that you know when you fail it's not the end it's not the end of the world uh and in fact people that succeed are not the ones that didn't fail these are the ones that kind of failed and still carried on and uh and i think that's that's one of probably one of the advantages in getting exposed to entrepreneurship in an academic setting because even if you fail maybe there are some safety nets to to to hold you and and and and kind of bring you back up as opposed to probably doing this all on your own uh um uh in in the in the real world setting so again this is just part of the training uh in in the lab i think bullet would like to ask you a question if you may uh yes very briefly may i ask you about your academic background and how did you come to imperial college and how what inspired you to work in this particular area um so i um my first degree was in computer engineering so i started as a computer engineer and so i i did my first degree in in at the university of new brunswick in canada and then i decided to basically i started asking myself questions electronics they are fantastic um you know software amazing you know we can do really interesting things but and then um how do these things work i kind of wanted to understand how these things really work at a fundamentally uh lower lower level and that's le that that question led me to do a master's degree in germany in microsystems engineering which was a materials oriented uh degree and then i realized that okay this was this was great but i need to learn more more chemistry so i joined a lab again in germany to do research uh for my phd in in nano materials and then once i uh finished that degree i said okay um you know going forward where are the biggest questions unanswered questions in the world right now and to me the answer to that was probably biology biology or biological systems so i decided to pivot towards more biological research and and i was lucky enough to get a fellowship from the german german research foundation to to work with uh one of the pioneers in in in chemistry uh george whitesize at harvard university so and that allowed me to get exposed to more chemistry more more biological chemistry or biochemistry and biology and and and and i was able to combine all the elements of my education and my my research experience to pursue some of the ideas that i developed over the years here at imperial with my own with my own lab great thank you it was an evolution basically so you know just spotting opportunities here and there asking questions and so on so we have wonderful we have these two examples of many uh very entrepreneurial uh creative uh turkish alums from imperial and humphrey you spent a good deal of time in turkey i wonder if you um experience that same culture and do you find um how do you find turkey's uh uh community um and this idea of a more entrepreneurial work or more startups perhaps uh developing in turkey yeah sure thanks alice and gloria from yeah so i can add to that i mean i was very lucky to spend three and a half years in istanbul um leaving you know around april this year um and i'm speaking more from an istanbul perspective than a whole of turkey but i mean much of this does apply to turkey one of the things if you spend that time there you cannot fail to notice that there is a strong entrepreneurial culture particularly in istanbul if you think about it it's a city twice the size of london so rather than having a small river in the middle it's got a very large piece of water but it it's basically two londons joined together in certain terms of scale and then if you look at the demographics of that city and particularly like the population from 20 to 35 you know it's vastly bigger than london many of these people are tertiary educated many people are entrepreneurial and and perhaps are more perhaps more risky happy to take risks i would i would say than what we see sometimes here in the uk so we had a lot of people who joined us at deloitte there you know who had often spent two or three years starting up a business um you know with some success and then decided to do something different but that's not the usual experience i would say in the uk so much so there is a strong entrepreneur entrepreneurial background and there are a lot of events held you know in istanbul where people come together and you meet people who are developing new things often they're still students sometimes they're recently ex-students sometimes they're doing doctorates etc and they're looking for funding and they're looking for the kind of business support to take their idea to the next level they're looking for contacts um because many of these people perhaps are not well connected throughout europe and you know don't know who should i speak to in the uk if i want to if i want to develop this or who should i speak to in the netherlands or germany etc so there's a lot of support that these people can be given i and i think actually my my perception being there was was the the kind of entrepreneurial spirit i think in particular in istanbul where i experienced it strongly was stronger than i've experienced anywhere else and i've been in many you know worked in many cities around the world um the government has traditionally provided quite a lot of r d support through techno parks which give people you know businesses tax advantages and etc um there's still a lot more to be done i i guess i one of the things i found was that perhaps there wasn't the close link between universities and business generally that is a you know a hallmark of successful um innovation countries and also a success of trying to break down the barriers between business um and universities which of course is a great feature of the us some of the big u.s universities but also of course it's perhaps what you imperial college is most famous for of all is being kind of quite market entrepreneurial and i remember when i was at imperial in 1984 we were always very impressed with students that one of our lecturers drove a porsche because he was also a consultant to a large aluminium company and he kept taking samples of aluminium out of his car and analyzing them in the lab which was very impressive but that was the sort of experience that you perhaps wouldn't get elsewhere so much so yes and that i i think um that relationship between universities and the business sector is very important and and you mentioned government support as well a question came in from an audience members very much along the lines where of my next question and they say if we think of turkey as a business environment one of the most powerful resources and capabilities for innovation in turkey i would also you know what are the opportunities and what are the challenges and perhaps you could pick that up and back to humphrey and fira from all of your perspectives yes well when we look at the level of innovation in turkey i don't think um we are where we should be and i do hope that this entrepreneurial spirit that our speakers have mentioned uh will sooner or later also uh vitalize the innovation environment and industry will become more innovative it is true that we have a long way to go [Music] according to global innovation index turkey ranks at the 51st place among nations uh and turkey has been going back turkey's rank was 42nd in 2016. so while the resources we are investing in innovation have been steadily increasing over the years the returns are not rising at the same rate so it seems we are not managing these resources effectively and productively this is also the case for many developing countries among the middle income countries i think 37 middle-income countries were listed in the index that i mentioned turkey's rank was eighth place turkey has certain advantages but also certain weaknesses in innovation um now where will the resources and the impetus uh come from for innovation of course i can i have to look at this first of all from the angle of private companies and private sector a big problem is attracting young talents to our enterprises and to turkey in the first place the ones who are studying abroad and doing research abroad we need their their expertise their knowledge their know-how to get innovation going in in turkey but of course it is our task to create the conditions to attract them to to turkey these young people can be successful anywhere in the world they have infinite possibilities available to them they can live and work anywhere they want but most of them want to return to their home countries the only reason they do not return is because they do not find attractive employment opportunities they are not sufficiently challenged professionally and they're not sure that their talents and and their professional expertise will be appreciated needed even and rewarded so if we want to give them incentives to come back i think we have to basically we have to run our company as well make them competitive on a world scale show young people that we are not dependent on the state of the turkish economy we are immune to the ups and downs of our economy we do not earn our money by playing political games we seriously want to invest in innovation we value creativeness and creative people very highly we are constantly in search of new ideas there is diversity in our workforce there are opportunities for working abroad the compensation we provide is in line with international standards and we believe in developing our people and giving them opportunities to grow i think we have to make sure that we are pursuing these policies and we have to communicate them well of course and finally we we have to contribute whatever we can for building a creative competitive ecosystem in our country uh and our city creative young people want to live in environments where creativity flourishes through intellectual freedom where the establishment of innovative industries is encouraged and where there is a lively culture and art scene and communities of of like-minded people so the task is not not easy but we have to do all these things that's a fabulous uh call to action movement and i think hope everyone on the um on this call uh heeds it because i think there are things that can be done and and as we come out of the pandemic and have learned to use technology in absolutely new ways i think that freedom to uh work uh from where you want to be and uh to change the uh nature of uh of your interactions across borders is really very powerful too um and and your cultural uh you're contributing so much to that uh that art scene and the creative the rise of the creative class and the the way people will want to be uh in uh such a wonderful place uh it's really inspiring thank you alice thank you oh free um uh bullets talked about these um these challenges and and what's your view because i think you've seen that corporate side and that investment and the trade side with turkey yeah it's funny because as you go around the world often when you get in these conversations with people whether it's government people or or business people often peop you know the this the standard question is why can't we invent the next google and you know you go back and there's been of course huge amounts of research as to why such a disproportionate amount of this technology and so forth and innovation comes from the us and there's some clearly established things like you need good infrastructure you need strong institutions strong regulators strong political institutions you need very well developed education and human capital and you know you need sophisticated markets and and business sophistication as well and and if you have all that in place then you can start attracting some entrepreneurs and some innovation and of course eventually success breeds success you know if you ask so many of the people i used to speak to at some of these um entrepreneurial shows etc where they were demonstrating some of their ideas or some of their new apps that they've come up with you know they all wanted money and investment to either ideally to go to silicon valley um or perhaps potentially these days in in some areas um like like green finance and so forth um you know london is starting to become a bit of a fintech hub uh and obviously there are hubs in well all through europe but but inevitably you know the reputation of those places because it's not just that they have great scientific and technical um qualifications in terms of very some of the best universities in the world but they're also surrounded by an infrastructure that's supportive of those people um so you know i think you have to be realistic it's small steps initially and those will lead to bigger steps you know you're not going to snap your fingers and suddenly become a major innovation center but i mean government policy is important and we shouldn't forget that it can't be left entirely to the market and i think if government can focus on some areas where it really wants to support and it believes for example that you know there is some built-in advantage to the country being in that way perhaps in terms of green energy or perhaps in terms of healthcare or whatever it is that it capitalizes on that and then tries to attract um at least grow strong innovators in those areas i don't think it makes sense to try to take on everything and try to be an innovator across the board but i think concentrated um targeting in terms of providing financial support and general uh surroundings of business support and infrastructure support is going to be important i mean just finally i i would say one of those conditions i mentioned earlier on was education and clearly it's absolutely vital to maintain the high standing of universities to attract the very best people in the world and there is such a clear link between height you know the university rankings and innovation centers around the world that shouldn't shouldn't be forgotten and sadly i do know i did come across a lot of people who had left turkey because they didn't feel that their children were going to get the quality of education that they wanted um and we're giving that as a reason for leaving so once again education is right up there at the top of the list i think absolutely and i think about that ability to keep a foothold you know i think of how deep mind stayed in london even though it was being purchased by alphabet and it's now a part of that family of companies um thinking about how to have that environment where people want to stay and are able to work across borders i think as an approach we have a number of questions in the chat about um uh oh the biggest impediment to innovation and private sector and entrepreneurs we've been discussing and maybe trying to figure out as well how can the turkish education system evolve to increase their resources needed for research and how can we develop university industry relations with turkish universities and british universities and what we can do to give incentives to our students studying abroad to return home and so i'd be pleased to take up these i think that you know we view our international partnerships is very important both from the aspect the multicultural aspects but also from the great science because if you have an international group working on a problem they look at problems from different perspectives and they bring different backgrounds to their work and you get great things out of it i think firat probably has a very international group in his own uh research group um university industry relations um i you know any thoughts on that and uh and the turkish education system um can i say a few words on um university uh industry relations professor guest now this is one of our weak points uh unfortunately because simply the tradition is not there um industry um never wanted to cooperate with the universities there was no need to there was no real competition you know before turkey became an open market economy and uh the same outlook was shared on the side of the academicians when they looked at the industry unwillingness and inertia now of course there's a lot we can do and there's a lot we can learn from british universities and from the british experience in innovation in in general because britain highs ranks very high high in the innovation rankings i think in the charts that i mentioned britain is in fourth place um the major difference uh is that we do not have have a focused innovation strategy supported by the government there is support from the government but it is not focused and therefore it is not effective i'm pre-mentioned the need for government support and for the government to be involved certainly i agree but it has to have a certain direction which has to be linked also to the industrial strategy of the country the industrial strategy and the innovation strategy should be linked they should they should be connected otherwise um the results are not satisfactory as we have been experiencing because um we've been investing a lot there have been there's been a lot of government money being invested but if you give incentives to everything nothing is really encouraged that has been the our experience now there are examples of um cooperation between turkish institutions and uk universities and imperial college by the way perhaps i should mention here that imperial college and our bitra innovation center are about to sign an agreement uh to carry out joint research on innovative solutions for ensuring public health in communal bathroom spaces i hope this will work work and this collaboration will become we'll set an example for uh other projects there's an extremely interesting case i would like to bring to your attention here as an example of a very successful cooperation with imperial college there's a non-profit organization called yga young guru academy in turkey its volunteers develop international projects to help solve the problems of their the problems they their communities face they founded a startup called we walk to develop the smartest cane cane for visually impaired people we walk is also headquartered in london and is building a very inspiring collaboration with imperial college the project is supported by the british innovation agency innovate uk the wework smart cane was also selected as one of the best inventions of 2019 by time magazine the project is an excellent example of a startup which expands to uh global markets from the uk that's a great example and and thank you and and i'd like to turn to fear at um you know on these uh these types of startups and what kind of incentives we might give to students to return to their home country return to turkey and consider starting a company there i think one of the issues i keep on hearing back is that there is there is a worry about among among people that moved abroad and you know kind of established themselves here that if they go back they will not be able to uh they will not have the opportunity to come back out again so and i hear this quite often so um which means that there is some sort of perhaps a uh a diplomatic disconnect between turkey and and the the either the western countries or let's say broadly other other countries in the world so the channels are not really open to to travel or or move between countries and etc so people that live here uh in the western world let's say they just don't want to take the risk of going back and perhaps failing and not being able to come back again and perhaps that's one of the uh problems that could be addressed and again that's perhaps something that could be done by government slash governments to um to catalyze uh uh knowledge transfer through uh exchange of people and open the channels for for uh um interacting together in terms of starting companies i think uh we kind of need to change the mindset perhaps that like failing is okay and um because most of the time nobody wants to fail perhaps sometimes it's they're even like cultural uh uh prejudices against that so uh and and and that can already start perhaps uh earlier on uh during our education to talk about perhaps business and money and so on which nobody talks about when we're trained in in high school or or middle school and so on it's it's very fundamental and yet nobody ever talks about it so people are just taught mathematics and not to perhaps come up with ideas and and do things with their ideas and and i feel like it's a it's a mindset that could be implanted into into people early on uh and and once it's there then they will start thinking differently and in terms of uh thinking about problems they perhaps you know they can start thinking about solutions to problems well thank you ferrat that's really uh uh inspiring and about all of you are very inspiring i think that uh idea of failure leading to future successes is a very important uh message and i think you're right there are cultural impediments but we've also heard some really great ideas on how we can perhaps enhance and improve the the innovation ecosystem in turkey uh the relations between uk and turkey and uk universities and turkish universities as well as corporations across these borders we advocate very much for um for visas for entrepreneurs for opportunities for people to move across borders and i think that our alumni can be very powerful force on this so i think along with all of you we will call on the alumni with us today to think about how they can help help our students help our collaborations and help our future entrepreneurs think about how to um how to improve the entrepreneurial and innovative atmosphere and culture in in turkey uh bullet would you like to i i'm i'm inspired and optimistic after this conversation there are a lot of challenges but also good ideas absolutely it was a wonderful discussion i sincerely believe that the future of any nation depends on their skills and resources to innovate not only in science and technology but also in any field related to the welfare of of our planet so the more we do for innovation i think the more effectively we will serve our companies our communities and our countries and everybody who is trying to to solve the world's problems uh it all depends on our success in innovation because now innovation has also become the driver of sustainability and now we have a cycle where sustainability and innovation reinforce each other and i do think this is our greatest slope for the future well thank you so much and and thanks to all of you it's been a very interesting clearly we could go on for two hours or more and i wish we were all together because we would have uh have a little reception and more chance to talk so um i just want to thank our our uh wonderful group uh firat humphrey and and bulan bay thank you thank you thank you thank you

2021-02-28 05:03

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