A seminar on “Innovation for Sustainable Development: Role of Academia” was held on Saturday at Dhaka University.
DU Innovation and Incubation Lab (DU i-Lab) organized the seminar to initiate a discussion among the scholars in Bangladeshi Academia in order to develop necessary policies, theories, methods, analyses, tools, and techniques to support the movement of DU i-Lab toward facilitating the innovation and creativity development initiatives in Bangladesh.
M Rashedur Rahman, Director of DU i-Lab, moderated the seminar while leading experts on innovation from MIT, Harvard, Cornell University, Northeastern University, and Georgia Institute of Technology, and faculty members from different academic disciplines of Dhaka University attended the seminar.
Rashedur Rahman, also Assistant Professor of DU International Business Department told BSS that the participants highlighted challenges like lack of effective industry-academic partnership on funding, mindset and trust about research and its findings, awareness on innovation among the family level and lack of focusing on the impact of innovation which are hindering innovative culture in the country.
The seminar were also highlighted on not following up of already published research outcome, focusing too much on western model on innovation, absence of risk taking culture on innovation, research focuses on the “Lab” level, and curriculum that doesn’t encourage innovation, he added.
The seminar recommended on initiating open research, partnering with industry on impactful research, teachers playing a change maker role by leading and motivating students to take new initiatives, he said.
