A Wave of University Entrepreneurship

This article originally appeared in the fourth issue of Five One Review.

Universities are increasingly becoming hubs of entrepreneurial activity and innovation, where students can solve problems, prototype new solutions, collaborate with diverse classmates, and take interdisciplinary approaches to address local challenges.

Within our own backyard regionally, we have seen thriving entrepreneurship programs and centers, like the American University of Cairo’s Venture Lab accelerator to the Sharjah Entrepreneurship Center (Sheraa) hubs based in two of the emirate’s universities.

This trend has spread to Iraq, where in recent years we have seen the opening of entrepreneurship centers at the American University of Iraq - Sulaimani and the University of Kurdistan Hewler, among others.

At Five One Labs, we have also seen that the idea of launching a startup in the Kurdistan Region has gained momentum, and many current university students and recent alumni are considering this as a viable post-graduation option.

In light of this, we implemented our first two-month “Entrepreneurship in Universities” program in three universities in Sulaimani province in the spring of 2022, with the aim of familiarizing final-year students with the steps of launching a business, helping them to understand markets and supporting them throughout the prototyping process. The goal of this program was to encourage students to pursue entrepreneurship as a path and provide them with the hands-on skills needed, as prior to the program, 95% of surveyed students said they were unfamiliar with the technical concepts related to entrepreneurship.

Five One Labs is also now partnering with the American University of Kurdistan - Duhok which would allow entrepreneurship programs and activities to be accessible to the community in Duhok - both inside and outside of the university. The outcome of this collaboration will be a long-term entrepreneurship program on campus.

We are looking forward to more entrepreneurship and innovation programs across Iraq as they will pave the way for young, passionate entrepreneurs to enter the ecosystem and start a journey of building a business.