Wednesday, August 14, 2019

Nepal needs product diversification

Experts and business leaders said that Nepal's global trade is suffering due to lack of product diversification.
Addressing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signing ceremony between King's College and Demola – an international innovation challenge platform – in Kathmandu today, managing director (MD) of Safal Partners Ashutosh Tiwari said that the main problem of Nepali market is that traders and manufacturers are failing to diversify their productions. Citing example of handicraft business, he said that there is lot of potential for bringing creativity. “However, we are not utilising it,” he said, adding that Nepal needs to design sense for this.
“In economics, we talk about capital and technology for businesses,” he said, “However, we need more than that, we need productivity in work and complexity in design to compete in the global market.”
Also speaking at the programme, director of Jyoti Group Saurabh Jyoti said that the knowledge provided to students is not helping to bring innovations in corporate and business houses. “This is becoming a big problem for us,” he added.
Likewise, head of cooperation and counselor at Finnish Embassy in Kathmandu Kati Bhose, on the occasion, opined that education has to focus on research to create human resources as per today's demand. “The new changes that are surfacing in the world has not only been impacting the industries but the entire social environment,” she said, adding that it takes a new set of thinking, which is only possible by the collaboration between universities and the industrial sector to solve such problems.
“Demola invites companies as well as organisations and students to work jointly on their problems starting from problem identification to solution development,” Educational Designer of King’s College Udgum Khadka, said. “While doing so, academia gradually earns the trust of companies and brings them closer, and companies realise the potential of students even before they graduate.”
The learnings and insights during the process will be an invaluable repository of knowledge and information for Nepali academia and industries and organizations,” he added.
With the signing of MoU with the Finnish platform, King's College has become a partner of Demola in Nepal. Demola is a Finland-based global innovation challenge platform that has entered Nepal through a partnership with King’s College.
“With this agreement, we have the capability to strengthen international networks and bring co-creation tools to Nepali companies and society,” vice president of Demola Global Pekka SilvĂ©n said, on the occasion.
During the event, five different institutions including Annapurna Media Network, Young Innovations, City Planning Commission of Kathmandu Metropolitan City, Katha Nepal and M&S NEXT Venture Corp signed the agreement to join Demola as the Challenge Partners.
“King’s as an academic institute, which has always believed that learning should not be limited to the concrete classrooms and prescribed syllabi,” the president of King’s College Narottam Aryal said, adding that the college sees Demola as a tool capable of stitching an existing gap between Nepali education,  institutions and companies as well as government and non-government organisations. “Being a globally recognised Finnish co-creation platform, we expect Demola’s concept to nudge forward the culture of joint problem-solving in Nepal.”
Demola facilitates eight-week long projects where students and company experts work jointly on an innovation challenge, as set by the company as well as organizations. The collaboration will take place from problem identification phase to solution development phase.
According to the King’s College, there are two additional elements to the Demola Project: Demola Facilitators and Universities. While Demola Facilitators will bring about the global knowledge and insights in solving a particular problem of a company, organisations or helping them advance with the introduction of innovation, the university will try to apply the tested and proven academic theories, to help Nepali businesses and organisations reach further heights.
Demola innovation challenges have already brought together over 50 universities, 750,000 students and the leading companies from around the world. Currently, it operates in 16 countries including Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Spain, France, Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, Portugal, Mexico, Namibia, South Africa, Japan and China. Nepal is the 17th country to introduce Demola concept.

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