English - Industrial Research Institute

Technology Has Become the
First Need of this Era
Workshop for Knowledge-Based Industries
20-21 April 2010
The Industrial Research Institute continually affirms
its presence in the scientific field through the
specialized forums, seminars and workshops that
it organizes for the production sectors in order to
contribute to their future development. It focuses
on scientific progress and innovations to improve
industrial production, protect consumers, preserve
the environment, achieve sustainable development,
serve society’s development and improve its revenues.
During 2010, IRI contributed particularly in
workshops that address the development of knowledge-based
industries, the importance of technology,
and the promotion of green competitiveness.
In this frame, IRI in coordination with the Arab Industrial
Development and Mining Organization organized
the national workshop on Knowledge-Based
Industries. Among the participating counties were
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar,
UAE, Morocco, Algeria, Iraq and the Sultanate of
Oman, as well as representatives from the Lebanese
Ministry of Industry, IRI, and ESCWA. This workshop
was under the auspices of the Minister of Industry,
Mr. Abraham Dedeyan.
Speech by IRI’s Director General,
Dr. Bassam Frenn
In his speech, Dr. Bassam Frenn stated the following:
Needless to say that the human transition from the
industrial era which required physical labor to the era
of knowledge-based industries, which relies on intellectual
effort, has become the 21st century’s theme,
seeing the vast prospects of those industries, their diversity,
and their penetration to the thought perceptions
and scientific forecast potential.
As global "intellect" accelerates in innovating and
competes in its diversity to achieve the most recent
innovations, this cannot be realized nationally without
support for the public and private sectors to pave the
way for innovative scientific minds. For this reason,
they allotted their international laboratories’ technical
and financial capabilities, and have provided for
them the capable human minds. The main concern of
these laboratories was to take the international lead,
not only in terms of the innovations they are offering,
but in terms of the quality and relevance of these innovations.
Dr. Frenn added, these laboratories – that account for
less than 3 percent of the states’ budget in the developed
countries as well as in emerging ones, such as
China, India, Russia and others – constitute the oases
of Knowledge-Based Industries.
If the world crisis has reduced the expenditure on
the industry laboratories in many states, China has
offset the global downturn by giving 582,000 invention
patents in 2009, while the United States did not
exceed 190,000. A quarter of the Chinese patents
is given for new innovations, while the remaining
three quarters are renewals and improvements for
old patents. The private sector has participated by
52.5 percent out of the total Chinese innovation patents.
The weight of the whole Middle East region
does not exceed 1.7 percent in terms of global scientific
publications, and one percent in the European
patents request, where the future investments in it
did not exceed 10 million Euros ($ 14 million).
He pointed out that the invitation’s introduction to
this workshop has stated the growing demand for
knowledge and information technology as an inevitable
agent for integration in the new system of
economy, "and this increasing demand in the region
is based on the importing and use of knowledge technologies,
while looming in the horizon a predisposition
to configure scientific metropolis that adopt the
knowledge sciences and their economical diversity
in industry and other fields. But what these Arabian
metropolis are lacking is not only the funding which
is the underlying motivation for innovation achieve-
ments, but also working to attract the Arab innovative
brains abroad."
He considered, "that the significant objectives of this
workshop and its axes must take into consideration
the importance of bringing back theses minds to their
mother land and prepare comfortable work atmospheres
for them, and guarantee them complete freedom
for their scientific aspirations.
Speech by Mohammad El-Chaouch
The Assistant Director-General of the Arab Industrial
Development and Mining Organization, Mr.
Mohamed Chaouch, spoke about the competitive advantages
that no longer depend - as they used to in
the past – on traditional factors of production such
as capital, work, land and location. On the contrary,
the scientific knowledge factor has become the mainstay
in the production system, and its contribution has
reached 70 percent of the estimated added-value in the
products of the industrialized countries, and based on
statistical data, the volume of expenditure of the European
Community on research and development in
2007 has reached approximately 229 billion dollars,
representing the proportion of 1.85 percent of the European
GDP (Eurostat 2007). According to the same
sources, about 40 percent of European enterprises are
active in the field of inventing.
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