The UAEU Science & Innovation Park at the United Arab Emirates University organized a training camp for the “Innovation Challenge Program,” aiming to encourage students’ creative skills and develop new innovative ideas that can be transformed into successful pioneering companies. The camp witnessed a vast participation by the university’s students from different disciplines, which included 30 teams that underwent intensive training sessions, specialized interactive workshops in entrepreneurship and start-up skills, teamwork, active communication, presenting ideas, and ways of transforming ideas into real-life projects.

Dr. Eissa Alremeithi, Director of UAEU Science & Innovation Park, noted that the training camp of the “Innovation Challenge at UAEU” is a part of the entrepreneurship program, which runs for 6 months from June to November 2024. It combines both the active and personal presence of participants in various camps, and it ends with the Projects Presentation Day for the students’ completed innovative projects by presenting them to the community and to leaders of manufacturing and economics in different future disciplines in collaboration with TFE. The camp aims to encourage students’ innovation skills and develop new ideas that can be transformed into entrepreneurial projects and successful start-ups. The camp also provided students with the opportunity to present their entrepreneurial ideas and projects to experts and investors to receive the necessary guidance and support to implement them. We are keen at the UAEU Science and Innovation Park on supporting entrepreneurship and innovation among our students, and we believe that this camp will contribute to achieving this goal.

The camp’s activities included many workshops and training sessions to develop students’ skills, presented by experts and specialists from the field of entrepreneurship. The workshops covered different aspects of entrepreneurship, such as Fundamentals and Principles of Design Thinking presented by Mr. Simon Mawers and a workshop on “Interactive Innovation Mission” presented by Dr. Luweza Shetora. The “Innovation Challenge Program” at UAEU also involved a practical workshop entitled “Introduction to MVPs and Building Tech Products” and the best practices to deal with the produced models presented by Mr. Yousef Kamal. In addition to an introductory presentation on “Corporate Financial Fundamentals and Market Size: Financial Modeling" delivered by Mr. Hisham Akhtar, the camp helped students improve their ability to find entrepreneurial opportunities in different fields.

A number of scientific and practical workshops were held on different topics such as profit-making, creating customer value, learning monetization strategies, and “Lean Methodology” for understanding and establishing start-ups, in addition to “Business Model Canvas." Students also underwent training sessions on writing and preparing presentations, delivered by Mr. Maher Al Sunni, along with learning about how to create and develop a comprehensive business plan for their entrepreneur projects and learning about mechanisms for presenting ideas and projects effectively to attract investors and support.

At the end of the training camp of the “Innovation Challenge Program” at the United Arab Emirates University, a panel discussion was held, which brought together business partners and students to showcase the available opportunities for the completed projects and to have conversations with successful entrepreneurs who shared their experiences and provided students with advice and guidance on how to establish their own businesses. Students also showcased their ideas and entrepreneurial projects before a judging committee of experts and investors. The best ideas won valuable awards and were offered support for their implementation.