ISLAMABAD:Minister for Planning Development and Special Initiatives Professor Ahsan Iqbal on Thursday urged the experts from academia and industry to play their role in bringing innovation in their respective fields to achieve sustainable economic growth and development in the country.
While addressing a round table organized by the Ministry of Planning Development and Special Initiatives on innovation support project with academia and industry experts, he emphasized the importance of innovation to get the desired results.
“Innovation depends on a country’s socio-economic conditions, administrative system, culture and education system,” he said.
He said the Ministry of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives was executing the project and the basic objective of the project was to identify factors that lead to positive and effective innovative regulatory processes. Its other objective was to create awareness among stakeholders on the importance of innovations for enhancement of quality and productivity in national development.
The government, he said, had launched an investment fund project worth Rs10 billion aimed to encourage innovation in the country.
He emphasized the importance of the performance of the academia-industry linkages as HEC had given direction to make KPI.
The academia and industry experts must support the public sector in adopting innovation to strengthen the ecosystem of innovation in Pakistan, he added.
He stressed the need to adopt research, observation and critical thinking in every field. During the round table, the participants from various fields shared their views which were appreciated by the minister.
The minister said that HEC should also evaluate the performance of VCs. “There should be a mechanism in which performance could be judged of all the VCs running the universities,” he added.
The round table was attended by the Additional Secretary PD&SI, Chief Economist, Chairman Higher Education Commission (HEC), Vice Chancellors from various universities and experts from academia and industry.