R&D, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy

As stated in the 2015-2020 strategic plan, Yaşar University defined its mission as “high-quality education and research that establishes the culture of science and contributes to the development of society locally and globally”. In the strategy document decided by the Board of Trustees, the top management body; R&D, Innovation and Entrepreneurship have been added to the main focus points of the University, namely “Globalization”, “Learning by Doing” and “Cooperation with the Environment”, and the goal of being a new generation university that creates value for the society is Yaşar University’s most important goal.

The University’s senior management determined that the most critical components in achieving this goal are (i) producing high-quality academic knowledge, (ii) adding economic value to academic knowledge, and (iii) transferring this knowledge and technology produced at the University to the business world. In 2015, the Vice Rectorship for R&D, Innovation and Entrepreneurship was established by taking the initiative to establish the necessary organization and provide financing to this unit for the activities of the said components to be carried out under the coordination of a single unit. With this new structure, new units named Information and Technology Transfer Office (BTTO) and Project Support Office (PDO) were affiliated to the aforementioned Vice Rectorate, including all relevant units that will fulfill the functions of creating knowledge, adding value to information, and transferring information. The reason for taking this strategic step is to determine that effective technology transfer support and interface services require an agile structure that can be monitored, managed, and sustainable, which can be presented sequentially, complementing each other and customized according to the target market when necessary.

Yaşar University has also evaluated the potential impact of this new structure, which it has created with the mission of creating economic and social value for society, the University, and the environmental ecosystem, and has shaped its strategy according to this evaluation. In this context, when we consider İzmir and the provinces in the region, despite the presence of many high-quality universities and their technology transfer offices supported by TÜBİTAK (The Scientific And Technological Research Council Of Türkiye), it has been observed that there is a significant weakness in the levels of industrial establishments and private sector in the region to create R&D and innovation projects and benefit from financial supports. This framework has taken care to ensure the structuring, business model, target market, and service delivery. The style of the Vice-Rectorship for R&D, Innovation and Entrepreneurship is made by considering these indicators of the region and contributing to improvement within these scopes and, therefore, the vision and mission of this unit. Yasar University embraces all six policy keys that Responsible Research and Innovation should foster: ethics, gender equality, governance, open access, public engagement and science education.