UNIDO boosting innovative start-up development in Iran
In its effort to nurture the ICT-related entrepreneurial ecosystem through improved exposure to international expertise and technology by enhancing know-how exchange, UNIDO supports the ecosystem actors and entrepreneurial support organizations in Iran.
In cooperation with the Information Technology Organization (ITO) of the Ministry of Information and Communication Technologies of Iran and in partnership with the Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship, UNIDO convened mentors, coaches and entrepreneurial service providers from diverse backgrounds in an interactive Training of Trainers (ToT). During the three-day training, participants were coached to orient themselves in the ecosystem, define their role in it and apply experience- and action-based approaches to design entrepreneurial support programmes. The advantage of this training approach is the combination of thematic case studies, the possibility to individually manage and adjust learning trajectory through discussions with peers, with a focus on nurturing the mentoring competencies to support ICT-related start-ups and scale-ups in Iran.
The workshops enabled experience sharing on the transition of a start-up into a scale up. The capacity building activities are conducted as part of the UNIDO project “Promoting and upscaling innovative SMEs in the Islamic Republic of Iran”. The project builds on its results of the ICT ecosystem mapping exercise. The project maintains momentum in building a so-called “business angels community” – a diverse pool of ecosystem support actors. This pool of business mentors, who successfully completed the Training of Trainers (ToT), is expected to constitute the core of the “Scale-up Hub” that will play a major role in raising Iran’s profile as a knowledge-driven economy. Aiming to bring scale-up opportunities for successful and financially sustainable start-ups, the Scale-up Hub will support networking with potential partners in the country and abroad, attracting both local and foreign investment.
For more information contact Farrukh Alimdjanov (F.Alimdjanov [at] unido.org (F[dot]Alimdjanov[at]unido[dot]org))
