KAUST launched the first ‘homegrown’ corporate innovation program in the gulf region this fall. The program, REVelate, is aimed at mid and senior management of Saudi-based companies, to help create an ‘intrapreneurship’ culture that can benefit corporate innovation in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in a range of different industries. It combines elements of new venture creation and incubation of new ideas and inventions, while also delivering executive education in innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship.

Naguib Chowdhury, Innovation Specialist at Islamic Development Bank (IDB), praised the REVelate program for tailoring entrepreneurship training for the corporate setting. As he explains:

“You actually face different sorts of problems when implementing novel initiatives within an organization. It must evolve within established boundaries; so how do you push those boundaries and come up with something new that will really add value to the organization? I think the whole concept is very new. People have called it corporate entrepreneurship, or intrapreneurship.”

Stimulus to pave the way for innovation in corporate Saudi Arabia

Two units of the KAUST Economic & Technology Development department, the Industry Engagement Office and the Entrepreneurship Center, worked closely to facilitate the right mix of lectures, self-directed work and mentoring to develop projects that are strategically important to the participating companies.

“REVelate has been developed very much to enhance the innovation capacity of KAUST industry partners, using a mixture of in-class lecturing and group workshops, using an adaptation of the same methodologies that we use to create KAUST spin-outs,” said Gordon McConnell, the lead of the KAUST Entrepreneurship Center, which has developed the REVelate idea and the REVelate curriculum and is delivering it in KAUST.

Many years of research data has shown that applying corporate innovation methodologies and entrepreneurship techniques has a highly beneficial effect on corporate performance and competitiveness. This is particularly true for Saudi companies operating in a competitive market place.

“This new offering, unique in the region in its scope, has been created based on a stated need from that KAUST corporate partners” said Imad Abukhalaf who leads KAUST’s Industry Engagement Office. “This initiative is part of the value that KAUST can offer companies who wish to engage with the university, in addition to other privileges such as access to world class research and facilities.”

The four-month program consists of two blocks of four-day sessions held at KAUST and remote learning activities with expert mentors on hand. The four-day sessions, which comprise of lectures and workshops, have been designed to expose the teams to the right stimulus paving the way for new idea generation, product development and innovative thinking. When not in the lecture room, the participants are given the opportunity to implement their learning at their companies while being mentored by KAUST’s entrepreneurship team. This could lead to a number of outcomes from breakaway solutions to old problems, to exploring new potential markets to grow revenue and profitability.

Fostering an innovation culture in the region

• When asked to assess the main tools that he and his IDB group would take back to their organization, Naguib Chowdhury highlighted the business model canvass. He believes that the process of testing value propositions is vital before setting out to design programs.
• “We sometimes simply design programs based on the stated needs from the member countries.. But to really go through these different areas of the business model and to really question ourselves as to what might work, or might not work, is very important,” as he expressed.
• Chowdhury believes that these intrapreneurial principles learned at REVelate can be made to apply to the operations of their various programs for the member countries as well as for the business planning for of the various internal departments. .

REVelate is one of the many avenues that KAUST is taking to support the Kingdom’s vision of moving towards a knowledge-based economy.

By Meres J. Weche, KAUST News