Innovation and entrepreneurship in Iraq are the backbones of modernism and the key to improving a country’s infrastructure, quality of life, and future. Even though Iraq and Kurdistan are in great demands and have incredible space for innovation, but we don’t see it happening as much as we would like to. This is what Dr. Hemin Latif explained in his TEDx talk titled “How Can Teaching Creativity Support Entrepreneurship?” at the first TEDxNishtiman event in Kurdistan, Iraq.

Dr. Latif, a university lecturer and the executive director at TeraTarget, an IT innovation company, suggests that the school system is the cause of the problem; the problem of the lack of innovation and entrepreneurship personalities. Dr. Latif states that our school systems don’t build or grow creativity in our youth. After finding the root of the problem, Dr. Latif decided to fix it, at least on some levels. He prepared a new course on creativity and innovation in the university that he teaches.

After overcoming obstacles, Dr. Latif finalized and provided the course on creativity. There were concerns about the course’s success and whether the course is going to attract enough interest among the students in the course’s topics. However, the course exceeded everyone’s expectation. The number of students that registered for that course were six times more than the expected number.

This huge number of students means people, especially the youth here, desire to learn and explore creativity. “We teach people physics, and then we expect them to apply it, we teach them law, and then we expect them to apply it.” Dr. Latif continued, “The same goes for creativity, we have to teach creativity before we expect it from people. We cannot demand creativity without teaching creativity!”

Iraq is lacking innovators and entrepreneurs, even though there are opportunities for these people to thrive and make changes. Since Iraq and Kurdistan, too, are “developing” countries and have shortages in services, innovators and entrepreneurs are needed to fill these spaces.

These people can reshape and reintroduce communities in a new image. An actual image that will make it easier for the future generation of innovators and entrepreneurs to establish themselves. To achieve this, first, we have to start with the educational system and remake it in a way that encourages innovation and entrepreneurship. Dr. Latif ends his talk by stating his dream of having every student in the country taking a course on creativity and having every institution in the country appointing a vice president for creativity and innovation.

TEDx talk of Dr. Latif about How Can Teaching Creativity Support Entrepreneurship in Iraq?

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In Madad Lab II After months of training and preparing, participants have finally presented their projects.

The participants presented their projects for the jury. Members of the jury are a group of foreign companies and institutes, EU representative, GIZ, TeraTarget, and government officials.

Ten teams were participating in the program. Competing teams had different project ideas and wanted to achieve the first place in the program.  The projects had many different themes, and all were making a great impact on the communities in their unique way

The projects were specializing in renewable energy and solar panels, also health care services, public services, and volunteering services. Each team gave a narrowed-detailed presentation about their projects for eight minutes and then. After presenting, they spend five minutes answering questions from the jury.

The board of jury started their process of filtering and ranking the projects of the teams. The number of the juries was eight experts, local ones and international ones.

The ranking of the winning teams was from the seventh to the first. They were chosen depending on amount of impact the project will have on the people’s life, environment, and society generally.

The team that took the first place in the competition had a project for helping refugees with their education. The first-place winners until the seventh-place winners, will all have to start working on their projects. They’ll receive an amount of financial support determined by the need of the project. Along with the financial support they will receive mentoring to establish their project.

The jury will choose the winners depending on how much impact the team members will achieve through the project. The jury will select winning participants to attend the upcoming events of the program.

Because of the attendance of local and international companies and institutes in the presentation date, the participants received more chances. The companies have promised to support the projects, financial and money wise.

The technical help in the workshops of TeraTarget made this stage of the program possible. TeraTarget is until now giving mentoring to the participants.

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After the end of the technical workshops of Madad Lab II, participants are ready to present their projects.

The teams will present their projects in front of a jury of international and local selected experts. Since it is their first time to present in an event like this. TeraTarget and GIZ decided to give the participants pitching rehearsals to help the teams present in better shape.

The pitching rehearsal is basically; teams representing their ideas as if it is the official presentation day. Rehearsal will make the participants overcome their fear of presenting the projects to the official jury. This rehearsal will help with preparing an effective presentation for the projects.

The participants have been working on their projects for months now. Most notably TeraTarget has given them mentorship and guidance throughout the whole workshop process.

To achieve a full potential outcome, TeraTarget and GIZ prepared another and a final workshop for the participants. This workshop focused on how to present the idea rather than how to create the idea as it was in the workshops.

With attendance of Dr. Hemin Latif, the Executive Director at TeraTarget and Dagma Blaecudy the President of SO5 program. They both gave comments and advises on how the teams should present their projects. The participants learned valuable lessons on how to present their projects for the jury.

One advice was on making the teams understand, they have eight-minutes to present everything they worked for in past months. Managing time is an important aspect for this project. The second advice was on the presenting process, how to plan their presentation material and which points should come first.

The participants made their projects richer even on the last day of the early round of the program. By end of Day 1, they were ready to present what they have been working on for the past months. They have taken the first step in developing and making their ideas a reality in future.

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WSA which stands for Worlds Summit Awards is a nomination-based award system in digital innovation. The yearly summit focus on new innovations in the field of IT. They also require these digital innovations to have a positive social impact.

The event is within the framework of UN SDG and partly funded by EU.

The significance of the upcoming events of WAS is that for the first-time inventors from Iraq can join too. This will open the door to many local pioneers and prominent figures. They can give their invention the chance to see the light on a global platform.

A fundamental part of the WSA is the National Experts. These are experts from 178 countries around the world. Each expert is coming from a different background and have a variety of social engagements.

The first National Expert that was selected by WSA in Iraq is Dr. Hemin Latif. He will be supervising the early nomination to the international summit.

Dr. Latif holds a BSc in Civil Engineering, a BSc in Computing and Statistics. Along with a Graduate Diploma in Computing and Informatics. And finally, a Ph.D. in Interaction Design and Robotics.

Moreover, he is Assistant Professor of Information Technology at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani (AUIS). On an entrepreneurship view, he is the founding Director of the Center for Informatics and Data Analytics (CIDA). Along with being the Co-founder and Executive Director of TeraTarget for Digital Intelligence and IT Innovations.

Besides his education and entrepreneurship occupations, Dr. Latif has supervised numerous student projects and teams. Including winning projects of City Award of Sulaimani 2014, the winning project of the national competition of Microsoft ImagineCup 2012 . Finally, he has mentored many featured projects on multiple TV programs.

These experiences in a variety of fields have made Dr. Latif a strong candidate as a National Expert. Therefore, he was chosen by WSA as the first and only National Expert from Iraq.

Now, inventors can participate in the WSA, through their national expert. Additionally, have the chance to benefit from this international opportunity.

The World Summit Awards are a non-monetary award system. Instead, the program focuses on sustainable knowledge transfer through a worldwide network. This means that winners benefit not from a one-time financial reward, but a lifelong partnership and integration.

This lifelong partnership and integration will include the following: –

• Pitching seminars
• 5-minute pitch session in front of an international audience during the Congress
• A program of especially crafted workshops for the winners
• Invitation to the prestigious award ceremony and Gala night
• Board and lodging for the durance of the Congress
• Eye to eye exchange with speakers, jurors and international guests

• Integration into a network of internationally recognized digital content developers
• Access to the WSA community of global experts and industry leaders in over 180 countries
• Interaction with world-renowned sponsors and partners of the WSA community
• Workshops specially shaped for the winners needs
• A videoclip highlighting the winners projects
• Special placement on WSA website, Youtube channel and social media promotion
• Long-term coverage within WSA editorial channels

These chances are a crucial help to make any business or idea successful. People now, from Iraq and Iraqi-Kurdistan can benefit from it, too.

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For the period of two months, the partakers in Madad Lab II workshops have been receiving knowledge and mentoring. The workshops have been focusing on important aspects which guarantee the success of the projects. Now, participants have a great sense of knowledge to come up with projects, create them and represent them, workshop on Interactive Design and Prototypes in Iraq.

In the final workshop of this round, participants learned what interactive design and prototyping are. These two fields help creators and developers to understand the negative and positive sides of their work. As explained in the Interactive Design and Prototypes workshop, the experience is the most important part of any product. The partakers received all needed knowledge on how to improve their current projects or the ones they’ll have in future.

The participants have joined the program with a goal of making a change in the societies. Especially societies that recent humanitarian crises in the region affected them the most

After the Interactive Design and Prototypes workshops, participants learned how to design projects in the best possible shape. They learned how much the effectiveness and efficiency of a product affects the users. Now, partakers know how to design their product in a way to provide a positive experience to the user.

Moreover, in the Interactive Design and Prototypes workshops, the participants learned the difference of subjective and objective feedback. Feedbacks are fundamental to determine the next step and the needed improvements to a product. Partakers learned how to target the correct audience when it comes to collecting feedbacks and information on the product’s performance.

In the last workshop day, TeraTarget decided to have a discussion session with the participants and have their feedback. The participants have given back important notes on the series of the Madad Lab II workshops. In the session, we learned that some participants came up with new projects ideas in the workshops time period. On the other hand, some of them used the workshops and TeraTarget’s technical teaching to improve their established projects.

Since the partakers were coming from different educational backgrounds, they interacted differently with the subjects. As some partakers are more advanced in certain fields, they benefited from other field topics. The variety of different subjects that TeraTarget provided helped participants to explore new fields and try new things.

Qudra programme has established Madad Lab workshop series and has chosen TeraTarget as their technical teaching partner. They made this decision depending on the name that TeraTarget has made in the field of business planning and IT innovation. The workshop series has covered topics such; business planning, IT innovation, marketing and last one was design and prototype workshops.

Depending on connection and needs topics are chosen and this caused great outcomes of the projects presented in the workshops.

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TeraTarget starts robotics workshops in Iraq, as the Madad Lab II workshops continue, participants are learning exciting topics. These topics include Robotics and Physical Computing. As usual, the Madad Lab II workshops and TeraTarget’s technical help are providing useful skills to the participants.

After this week’s robotics workshops in Iraq, the participants will be able to do plenty of critical and fundamental technological innovations. The efficiency of these workshops is that they are practical more than theoretical. Participants are creating and coding basic robotic programs in the workshops, and this creates an interactive experience for them.

The robotics workshops are action-driven ones. Participants learn how to make LED lights, sensors, joysticks, push buttons and program coding. They have created their own small functional robotic parts. Furthermore, created and coded robots for the first time in the robotics workshops, even though they had no background knowledge.

The participants learned how to do the basics of coding using the Arduino program in this week’s robotics workshops. The program is an excellent choice for working on both hardware and software programming at the same time. Moreover, participants learned about motors and how robots and LED lights work. They finished creating LED boards with controllable lighting systems. Furthermore, the partakers created movable motors, controlled through the Arduino program. Notably, the robots are basic, but they are a fundamental start in the world of robotics.

The world’s stepping towards a path of bringing robots to take on specific tasks in our life. Therefore, these new skills and knowledge about robotics and computing are crucial to know and master. Participants at Madad Lab now have the necessary abilities to improve themselves and compete with the fast-growing world of robotics.

While the participants develop their projects, they’ll be able to include a robotic aspect to it. This opportunity is unique, and it is not a common thing in the region. The funding of the Qudra program and the technical partnership with TeraTarget are achieving successes. TeraTarget has provided and helped the workshops with top IT field expert lecturers to mentor the participants toward more success.

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