Industry-Academia collaboration critical to economic growth and employment creation

The President and Executive Dean of the Noble International Business School (NiBS), Prof. Kwaku Atuahene-Gima has charged businesses in the country to take more risks in engaging in other ventures that are not core to their operations, but have the potential to make them more profitable while creating more employment.

He made the comments at the 2nd Ghana Business Summit organized by Globe Productions under the theme “Driving Corporate Entrepreneurship via Industry Academia Partnership”.

According to him, the question of how Academia and Industry can collaborate better to drive economic growth needs to be consistently asked.

“It’s obvious that the Universities are lagging behind when it comes to producing the products that industry needs. One way academia can turn things around is for them to run their institutions like businesses. This way they will be able to position themselves to support companies while getting assistance from companies as well.”

The summit attracted players from different aspects of the business environment in the country.

Apart from a change of mindset for stakeholders in industry and academia, Prof. Kwaku Atuahene-Gima advocated for active participation of Government in the area of research, as the country continues to have a low level of research and development as well as technological capacity.