File photo used for representation only
Qatar’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play an important role in the growth of country’s economy. Introducing enhanced and new products and services can help SMEs grow and seize new business opportunities locally, regionally, and globally discussed experts during a webinar held recently.
Qatar Research Development and Innovation (QRDI) Council, Qatar’s regional leader in research with Innoget hosted a virtual event about QRDI’s second edition of Open Innovation Challenge Program.
Addressing the event, Haya Al Ghanim, RDI Program Director at QRDI Council gave an introduction about QRDI and its open innovation program. She said, Qatar Open Innovation (QOI) is one of the several programs that QRDI offers with the aim to create locally empowered and locally connected RDI ecosystem to transform the social and economic future of Qatar. The QRDI portal serves as a national platform where you can have an easy access to navigate resources and capabilities in RDI in infrastructure present in Qatar for researchers and innovators.”
QOI program connects Opportunity Owners based in Qatar, mainly large enterprises and government agencies, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to a global pool of innovators to address challenges and opportunities and also to develop innovative technologies and solutions. “We identify those opportunities with our local partners and detail them into open innovation calls, publish them and evaluate the submitted proposals and award the winning proposal with the funding and go ahead with developing and piloting of the solution. The open innovation program provides a unique opportunity for innovators to commercialise their solutions as they can gain access to funding,” she added.
Federico Posada, Process Excellence & Digital Transformation at Milaha shed light on two of Milaha’s Open Innovation Challenges - firstly, seeking innovative solutions to automation and optimisation of stowage planning and secondly seeking innovation for a reliable and close to real-time carbon accounting and reporting in Milaha’s maritime transportation of containers.
He said that CO2 emissions are a hot topic at the moment, and “we are looking to tackle these in a way we have of proper reporting and accounting. Governments around the world are enforcing policies and promoting laws and regulations which are giving set of actions that have to be driven by stakeholders in the transportation business in order to reduce CO2 emissions.”
Milaha is looking for technologies and innovative solutions to autonomously and accurately measure and report the carbon footprint of moving containers in real-time along their supply chain. With this initiative, the company is seeking closest to real-time measurement of CO2 emissions, carbon accounting and reporting transparency.
