Abstract:

This article summarizes a sampling tour among today’s 21st century Arab innovators based on a program that solicited innovative science projects from the Arab youth. The selected submissions were interviewed in their countries during an innovation tour of 13 countries during 3 weeks in the summer of 2008. The preceding review of over 5000 on line applications yielded the scheduling of around 500 interviews, followed by an in depth expert evaluation of around 100 selected projects, and guided by patentability criteria. This process resulted in choosing 16 participants that were invited to build and realize their projects from idea to product in 6 weeks during the first quarter of 2009 inside a specially built workshop inside a reality TV studio at the Qatar Science and Technology Park. The implementation phase was supported by various identified experts using laboratory facilities from Qatari: Education City Universities, College of the 1orth Atlantic, and the 1ational University. This article documents general observations related to the Arab innovation infrastructure (higher education, technology procurement, and laboratories), and concludes with a set of recommendations to improve the scientific innovation environment in the Arab World.