Sci & Tech
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Need to Recognize Potential of Tech Parks

While government officials often claim technoparks are key to curbing the nation’s risky and unsustainable reliance on oil revenues, the science and tech centers have an irrelevant share of funding in the national budget and are normally left to their own
Pardis Technology Park located on the outskirts of Tehran
Pardis Technology Park located on the outskirts of Tehran
In a rare statement the senior government official said “the science and tech parks would do better by employing prominent foreign advisors” and building strong collaboration with relevant foreign institutions on mutually beneficial terms

Given the meager funds available for science and technology parks in the national budget, the deputy minister of science has called on the government to increase investment in the specialized areas.

Addressing a gathering of local tech park directors on Wednesday in Tehran, Vahid Ahmadi said, “Science and technology parks have a paltry share in the annual budget … their development demands more and meaningful support,” Mehr News Agency reported.

Iran’s first technopark was inaugurated a decade ago. While the government has been strongly promoting the expansion of science and knowledge-based businesses as a strategy to reduce the perilous reliance on oil  revenues, the sector so far has not received its fair share of financial support from the state and government.

Ahmadi’s comments were echoed by the deputy for innovation and commercialization of technology at the Vice Presidency for Science and Technology. Mahmoud Sheikh-Zeinoddin, who was speaking at the event said, “Only 2% of the Ministry of Science budget is allotted to tech parks.”

 Third Generation Universities

Since his first electoral win in 2013 President Hassan Rouhani and his men have called on the universities and centers of higher learning to proceed with the times and evolve into third-generation academic centers.

Globally, universities today are undergoing massive change, evolving from science-based, government-funded institutions into ‘international know-how hubs’ dubbed third generation universities, or 3GUs. They play an effective role in and contribute effectively to science or technology-based economic development.

There is a global shift in the approach to higher education with the help of third-generation universities that play a major role in addressing critical problems by linking industry and the labor market to create, among other things, sustainable jobs.

Ahmadi believes that technoparks are key in the transformation of Iran’s outdated “knowledge for knowledge’s sake structure of higher education to a more productive industry-friendly system.”

He noted that without adequate funding the technology centers will fail to play the role they were created for.

He proposed the tech centers to each focus on a specific part of the industry. “This will help the centers increase productivity and prevent them from straying from their intended goals.”

Ahmadi suggested that technoparks “form consortiums to be able to improve their financial leverage and increase their effectiveness on the industries.”

In a rare statement the senior government official said “the science and tech parks would do better by employing prominent foreign advisors” and building strong collaboration with relevant foreign institutions on mutually beneficial terms.

Technoparks in developing countries often provide multinational corporations with research and development services as they have a vast pool of skills which draw upon university students and graduates.

Ahmadi believes that local parks can and should borrow a page from their foreign peers and start offering quality services to international businesses in Iran.

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