The Second Invention Festival opened in Tehran on Sunday. The event, which will continue until Tuesday August 18, is underway at Tehran's Milad Tower.
"The main goal of the event is to promote innovative ideas so that they can be commercialized," Mohammad Pourqasemi, the event's organizer, said, IRNA reported.
According to Pourqasemi, the motto of this year's event is "Innovation and entrepreneurship: the driving force of Resistance Economy."
Resistance Economy is a set of guidelines proposed by the Leader of Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei to reduce reliance on oil revenues and boost domestic production. Minister of Science Mohammad Farhadi, Vahid Ahmadi, the Science Ministry's deputy for research and technology, and Mohammad Akhbari, chancellor of the University of Applied Science and Technology, attended the opening ceremony. Inventors, entrepreneurs, technological firms, scientific student associations and knowledge-based firms are participating in this year's event.
"Experts will be offering entrepreneurship consultancy and several educational workshops have been planned," Pourqasemi said. Promoting science-based economy has been a major priority of the government of Hassan Rouhani to reduce dependence on oil revenues.
The government has frequently held science-based events and introduced many incentives such as tax exemptions for knowledge-based firms in line with this policy.
