Objective: To consolidate and promote cooperation among private sector, university and non-governmental organizations for developing and implementing innovation policies in Turkey; to contribute to the development of innovation policies in Turkey by promoting the dialog between political authorities and public institutions and extending opinions; and eventually to increase public awareness on innovation
Scope: The fundamental target of the Initiative is to compose a Strategy Document, which will help address the objectives briefly defined above. Strategy Document is planned to be composed of 5 thematic groups which are "Turkey in 2023 and Innovation", "Financing of Innovation", "Human Resources and Skills for Innovation", "Environment and Infrastructure" and "Innovation in the Public Sector".
Partners: Implementation is carried out by a members group, which embarks a role from selecting the experts who will finalize the strategy document and other related tasks. The structure of the members of the National Innovation Initiative includes Presidents of 6 universities, CEOs from 6 major companies, 7 representatives of nongovernmental organizations, and 2 executives from REF. Please click here for the member list of the Initiative.
Current Status: The National Innovation Initiative (NII) has been initiated in June 2005. The Working Groups started working on the Strategy Document on October 1, 2005 along with a one-day long workshop contributed by nearly 80 experts both from academia and business world. NII completed its all day long second workshop on April 29, 2006 at the premises of Sabancı University, supported with participation from the members of NII. During the morning session, five Working Groups presented both their conclusion and evaluations came out through their intensive work implemented since October 1, 2005. Subsequent to that piece of work, afternoon section continued with four different "discussion groups", those of which were created of members who should represent at least each of the Working Groups. In this way, every discussion group was ensured to be able to state their review upon the other Working Groups' draft studies. The workshop was fulfilled with an assessment assembly by spokespersons that delivered the issues raised by the discussion groups.
During the following term, action was planned to transform the draft works into the final version, which is expected to be the NII's Strategy Document. The document is proposed to go public by the end of September 2006, and structure of the overall project has been designed accordingly.
On 4 July, 2006, a meeting with the participation of the Steering Committee Co-chairs and and Working Groups' Co-presidents, overall information was given about the workings and several developments of the Turkish National Innovation Initiative Project. Exchange of ideas made on the fundamental findings of Draft Strategy Report was realized. A lot of topics such as the compliance of the proposed ideas and projects' with the related laws and reglations; in addition to the regional and local approach to innovation, the role of legalized "Development Agencies" on the regional development and innovation; last but not the least awareness raising issues were discussed among other issues. Comments and suggestions upon communication plan for the announcement of the Report to the public, which is scheduled for October 2006 were also demanded. Another meeting along with the participation of the same group is further planned to be held on September 2006 in order to draw the framework for the final version of the Report.