Leading youth to join a ‘brave world’ of knowledge

AMMAN — What does it take to become an inventor that can make a difference? 

After all, the prosperity of an entire country might be a good invention away, says Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, founder and president of Abu-Ghazaleh Organisation (TAG-Org), a knowledge-based group and a world leader in the services it offers. 

After more than 45 years of serving the knowledge cause and in light of his deep insight of what is missing in the process of creating creative people, Abu-Ghazaleh will inaugurate Talal Abu-Ghazaleh University College for Innovation (TAGUC, taguc.com), in September this year as a not-for-profit institution and part of TAG-Org’s corporate social responsibility. 

In an interview at his office last week, Abu-Ghazaleh said TAGUC will provide the answer to the above question due to the uniquely huge and plentiful sources his group possesses; it will harness these capabilities to render the college a unique educational facility on an international level. 

Above all, the mind behind TAG empire is personally behind this project, with his long experience and ability to transform visions into facts on the ground. 

The first realisation came to Abu-Ghazaleh in 1965, when he attended a conference on intellectual property (IP) rights in San Francisco.

“The concept of IP was new to me then, but I came up with the conclusion then that [IP rights] protection is the basic requirement for innovation.” 

Fifty-three years after that event, TAG-Org is now the world’s largest IP protection company, with its operations sprawling across the globe through more than 100 offices. These branches also offer an assortment of other professional services such as auditing and translation, among others, and run not-for-profit programmes aimed at serving the communities where they are located.

TAGUC students will find this nowhere else, according to the group’s president. When they graduate with their inventions, Abu-Ghazaleh Intellectual Property, a component of the group, will help them register patents and protect their innovations, but way before that, students will be trained on drafting patent proposals, which is an essential skill for any inventor. 

Their instructors will give them access to a state-of-the-art education in their fields and coach them to ensure that their ICT-based inventions meet the criteria of success: novelty, practicality, usefulness and protectability in terms of IP rights.

The invention is the sole threshold to graduation and when they achieve the required excellence, the university will refund all the tuition fees they will pay.

The pursuit of excellence, according to Abu-Ghazaleh, starts from the admission stage. To be accepted, applicants have to pass an English proficiency test, TAG’s ICT skills test and a personality test, because, according to TAG-Org president, there are certain personal qualities that are essential to tap the potential of would-be inventors. 

Why only ICT? Responding to this question, Abu-Ghazaleh said that currently, the most valuable companies in the world are ICT giants, like Google. The future is all about information technology and knowledge, he stressed. 

In fact, Abu-Ghazaleh’s future vision has made its way to a new publication by the knowledge leader. The first draft of his book “A Brave World” is ready and will be released in both Arabic and English. The Jordan Times has had access to the English draft, which is expected to be printed by Harvard University Press. 

In the introduction, the author says: “The current age of technological advancement is giving birth to various disruptive technologies of the future. This refers to innovations that will cause major changes in the lives of mankind, from the ways in which businesses operate, healthcare is delivered, governments are run, to how citizens live their lives and everything in between.” 

The book, which sketches a picture of how the world would look like in 50 years, discusses prospects of technological advancements in the coming decades, focusing on the Internet of things, robotics, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, automated knowledge systems, social networks, the cloud, cellular technologies, cryptocurrency, the blockchain, digital commerce and a dozen other topics concerning the various fields that will rely heavily on ICT, including education, medicine, defence, auto industry and others. 

Through TAGUC, Abu-Ghazaleh seeks to take young people by the hand and lead them into this future. This does not stop at the invention and the patent, of course. He said that the university will encourage commercially viable inventions and use its vast network of corporate clients to market promising ones, “without benefiting itself from the deals financially “.

Even before the university opens its doors in Amman, four Arab countries have shown interest and want similar facilities for their young generations, including Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and the UAE. Abu-Ghazaleh said he is happy with that interest because “I have always believed in the potential of the Arab nation and I know that the future is for this region”.