There is no doubt that a lack of entrepreneurial attitudes holds back development of startups, with a mentality that copies rather than innovates and drags down success to the lowest common denominator. The enabling environment in a person’s head is as important as the enabling environment created by policies, regulations, infrastructure and access to finance. To address these challenges and foster an entrepreneurial spirit, business incubators need to be effective role models and leaders, but this will only result if they are entrepreneurial themselves, as role models for their clients (whether students, academic staff or local community members) and with the confidence and resilience to go out and change their environments.
The world is desperate for innovative and versatile talent; so we are at AL-Ahliyya Amman University as we are also desperate to encourage entrepreneurial mentality among our clients. We believe that having that entrepreneurial mindset is a gate for our clients to become distinguished and successful throughout their entire career. Entrepreneurship is critical not only to benefit students, but also to serve society by creating jobs and driving economic growth.
AAU will support its students, staff, and local community members from the idea stage; it will also take in and successfully accelerate more mature ventures. We will build our own program from the ground up for an academic environment – we realize that our students may not be able to work full time on their venture from day one and we will set up our process and structure to accommodate this. AAUBI will provide co-working space, accelerators and other resources to students, AAU staff and local community members.
Better governance; an incubator should create a board to govern incubator activities and help in building a number of strategic partnerships.
Experienced and knowledgeable staff members.
The management team of the incubator should consist of a director and few permanent staff, depending on the number of incubatees.
The attraction of investors and sponsors, and public and private stakeholders.
Do you have an idea with a great potential? Are you looking for: Funding, Mentorship, Plan-of-Action to propel you to the next stage, Customers/Partners, Promotion etc
The Center of Innovation and Excellence at AAU extended full support for The Hult Prize: The World's Biggest Student Movement Aiming to Solve our most critical social challenges through Students Startups by providing all the requirements to encourage the students to Join the competition.
As am one of HULT prize organizer, l am so proud that l had the chance to work with AAU Center of Innovation and Excellence. They act as our main support system, they do provide us with training, place to work and everything we need. I wanted to express my personal gratitude to the Center of Innovation and Excellence.
Our Center for Innovation and Excellence had supported us to invest our idea to make it in the right place. They were and still the best supporter that I had deal with.
I was one of those people whose entrepreneurial dreams were so far away. The university gave me an opportunity to create the better future that l wished by enriching my entrepreneurial thoughts through the Center of Innovation and Excellence. I am one of the smallest entrepreneurs in the country today, an optometrist and an internationally certified trainer in the field of talent, innovation and creative leadership.