News

The Business Incubator Center has launched a virtual summer program on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The program hosted specialists in numerous business fields, marketing, IT and design who shared their experiences with students participating in the program. The program aimed to give students the chance to build their businesses while learning all the skills they need. This was done through learning-by-doing where students gained hands-on, real-life experience creating a startup with fellow students and became familiar with business model canvas and testing their assumptions as they proceeded in the program.

The Incubator Center’s Director, Dr. Esra Ahmed Wali stated: “This was an eight-week course containing weekly workshops and seminars. We focused on create many opportunities for participating students to gain all the necessary skills required to start their own businesses”. She emphasized on the course’s main focus of developing business plans and lead towards business leadership that will benefit potential startups in their own businesses.

Participants worked in groups where each group has students from multiple disciplines such as: Businesses Administration, Marketing, IT, Design, Science, and Engineering. Every group member then took a role such as: Chief Executive Officer, Chief Business Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Information Officer and Chief Design Officer in the startup company.

The first week of the program hosted 4 speakers covering topics that assisted students in ideating their business idea and also know the new trends that can shape their choice of idea.

Marwa Aleskafi, Brinc Batelco IoT Hub’s Head of Acceleration Program, was hosted to talk to students about ideation which can be based on something that a person is passionate about or a problem/challenge that needs to be addressed.

The program also hosted Bahraini entrepreneurs such as the Co-founder of “Malaeb”, Yasser Abdulaziz who shared his experience as a startup with students. He also discussed the phases that a startup goes through to successfully launch his business.

With the aim of motivating students to utilize new trends in their business ideas and utilize the power of technology, Esra AlShemmari, Data Scientist in ila Bank Bahrain, was hosted to talk to students about the importance of data for all startups and ways to utilize data for the benefit of the startup.

In addition, Ameen AlTajer, CEO of “INFINITEWARE”, was hosted to talk to students about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and ways to utilize these in students’ business ideas.

At the end of the seminar, students were divided into groups. All groups had to bring up a business idea and its purpose. They also had to explain how they’ll plan on solving certain issues they face as they apply their plan in real life