Dr Khalil Al Mutawa (right), Secretary-General of GOIC with S Thomas Emerson at the signing ceremony.

Doha: The Gulf Organization for Industrial Consulting (GOIC) and Carnegie Mellon University signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) recently covering collaboration and joint activities in fields of mutual interest.

Dr Ahmed Khalil Al Mutawa, Secretary General of GOIC and S Thomas Emerson, Director of Donald H Jones Center for Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University signed the agreement.

The first initiative in the partnership is devoted to executive education program focusing on industrial entrepreneurship. Carnegie Mellon will design a Gulf-oriented training programme; the first of its kind in the region, to transfer its expertise in technology-based entrepreneurship and innovation to entrepreneurs and people concerned with developing small-scale ventures in both the private and public sectors within GCC member states.

GOIC will market and promote this program in collaboration with potential partners in the region who are concerned with developing local entrepreneurs and other parties concerned with helping youth in developing their future projects.

Studies indicate that most of the small-scale projects fail at their initial stages; where 50 per cent of the small-scale ventures fails in their first year and over 90 per cent fail to continue after their fifth year. All this failure is due to immaturity of ideas and lack of planning, according to GOIC.

In 2004, the number of small-scale ventures with investments of less than $ 2m in GCC member states was estimated at some 6,070 ventures, representing 65 per cent of the total number of ventures. The investment size in those ventures totaled around $3.7bn, or 3.6 per cent of the total investments in manufacturing industries which amounted to around $103bn.