Vocational School of Justice
IZMIR UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS; CENTER FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Izmir University of Economics (IUE) Technology Transfer Office (TTO) has been the only Foundation University to be supported by TUBITAK(Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey). Technology Transfer Office, established within the University, will provide support to entrepreneurial students, youth, academicians, and the business world; it will be a guide to turn innovative ideas into “reality”.
Ekrem Demirtaş, President of IUE Board of Trustees, stated that they had to make a technological revolution in order to produce innovations. He said, “IUE TTO will be granted 800 thousand TL for 2 years as part of TUBITAK’s 1601 Capacity Building for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Grant Program, and the University will make a contribution of 200 thousand TL. Technology Transfer Office, with a 1 million Turkish Lira budget, will bring the entrepreneurs together with the business world. It will focus on wide variety of activities including information transfer to project writing, and bringing industry together with innovation. This way, we established an effective structure in terms of producing innovations to achieve Izmir’s anticipated export target of 100 billion dollars as part of Turkey’s 2023 targets.”
President Demirtaş pointed that innovative products will be produced, and entrepreneurs, to turns these into reality, will be trained at the TUBITAK supported Technology Transfer Office.
‘Contributing to 2023 target with TTO’
President Demirtaş reminded that Turkey’s target for 2023 was achieving 500 billion dollar in export, and that Izmir’s share, in that goal, was 100 billion dollars. Demirtaş stated the following:
“Izmir currently has an export potential of 15 billion dollars. It is expected to reach 36-37 billion dollars in 2023. Significant, innovative, high value added products need to be produced in order to come up with 100 billion dollars. Therefore, we established Izmir Business Life Strategic Plan, a guide for Izmir business world, by a team of 28 academicians from Izmir University of Economics and 5 specialists from Izmir Chamber of Commerce. Chemistry, agriculture, and tourism industries were determined as the city’s leading sectors in terms of export in the plan. TTO will also guide entrepreneurs to find productive investment areas.”
IUE Technology Transfer Office in 5 steps
Step 1; arranging organizations in which entrepreneurs, academicians, students will get together with business world
Step 2; contributing to projects developments so that entrepreneurs, academicians, students can receive grants from national and international funds
Step 3; taking active participation in preparing, managing, and finalizing product based projects that will focus on university-industry collaboration
Step 4; supporting entrepreneurs on intellectual and industrial property rights
Step 5; guiding entrepreneurs to start-up their own businesses or business through industry collaboration