Dr. Erjaei: We Are Ready to Cooperate with ICT Park For Developing a Digital Economy Portfolio and Technology Transfer

Dr. Sadigh Damghanizadeh, the President of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Park, welcomed the Mayor of Mashhad, reviewing the recent discussions about the significance of the national information network: "Digital economy can be the key development. This year, while explicating our vision to the ICT Minister, I said that the financial volume of the world information network is five thousand billion dollars. Considering the one percent share of Iran’s population, it will be 50 billion dollars or in other words 1500 thousand billion tomans. At the time, the financial volume of I.C.T. in Iran is somewhere around 150 to 200 thousand billion tomans. In case this amount reaches 1500 thousand billion tomans, it would create permanent and full-time jobs for 20% of Iranian families, and Mashhad can play a significant role in making this happen," he said. This visit took place on October 25th, 2022, at the central branch of ICT Park.

Regarding profit in innovation, production, and marketing as three different sections, Dr. Sadigh Damghanizadeh clarified: "During the 40s and 50s of the last century, most of the profits were in production. During the 70s and 80s, these elements became relatively equal, and during the 90s and later on, production lost its major share in profit. This means that most of the profit is in innovation, and this fact shows the accuracy of Iran's Supreme Leader's vision, as for the last 20 years, he has been constantly indicating the significance of innovation.” 

The Advisor to the Minister of Communications was the next speaker, elaborating on an experience regarding policy making in Malaysia: "After several years of planning and conducting different measures, they realized they should become professional in I.C.T.; as such, they focused on this aim and transferred their experience gained in this field, which included company establishment and cluster building to the industry sector.” 

The President of Information and Communication Technology regarded the “development the required economic and technology capabilities of the related companies,” as the notable "task of the parks”; he continued, the nature and the role of parks are set “to improve their competitive spirit. Parks are regional organizations, similar to industrial states, free zones and special zones. Of course, these parks have more work to do in comparison to the mentioned organizations since in the parks, we also take care of the technology level in the companies by evaluating the companies annually and through a science bulletin named Technology Atlas, that introduces each of the products by the companies in a separate page.” He regarded the grading of product in the Technology Atlas.

"At the time, three public calls are being made. One is the product development grant in which we recommend the companies to introduce a product development project worth up to two billion tomans, half of which will be funded by us. Another is the clustering grant in which any of our established companies can create three new companies. 

Further, the President of ICT Park introduced the other mission of the park to be providing and developing the required technology for its companies: "At the time, we have reached a point where instead of governmental institutions, the private sector conducts research projects. Regarding the relationship between industry and the university too, we mentioned that the reason the university and industry have not properly reciprocated lies in absence of an initiative from the knowledge-based technology companies; as such, these two could not communicate properly due to their different discourses.”

Referring to the successful experience of setting up science and technology parks in the UAE and Turkey and the significance of parks in financial growth, Dr. Sadigh Damghanizadeh introduced the four main missions of the park: "Our first and most important mission is to help the growth of young companies in I.C.T. and turning them into developing companies. The second mission is to develop international interactions regarding Iran’s I.C.T. as we have already experienced great progress with African countries and Russia, and we can have better progress in other regions, including Afghanistan and Tajikistan, in which Mashhad Park can play a significant role.” “The third mission” he continued, “is to attract elites and reverse the migration process of elites as an aim truly achievable in Mashhad. The last one is creating a network between different growth centers and connecting those companies developed in the growth centers, which provides us with an advantage point in comparison to other existing parks.”

Then, Dr. Sadigh Damghanizadeh, introduced ICT Park's six propulsion projects: "Mashhad Park is the main center for producing and exporting cultural and artistic data and providing basic services and exporting to the countries in the Middle East region. He then clarified “employing IOT in food security issues, water consumption management and smart city, providing open system infrastructures, modern learning and its application, localizing hardware technology required by the national information network and smart logistics are among our other propulsion projects.”

At the end of his speech, the Adviser to the Minister and the President of ICT Park mentioned the history of the Park's establishment and introduced different park branches: "We have to establish a content production and service provision hub for the Middle East region in Mashhad, export content to all countries and make Mashhad the capital of digital culture in the Islamic world.”

Moreover, Seyyed Abdullah Erjaei, the Mayor of Mashhad, indicated the role of the digital economy in Iran, and emphasized the importance of Future Studies regarding new technologies in urban planning, and noted: "It is important to know what is our share of I.C.T. technology, and of course, to know what kind of technology we will face in the coming future.” Further, he referred to an ideal job creation model: "Job creation in its real sense becomes possible if we can export to new markets, or in other words if we lead employment potentials toward exportation; otherwise, we are simply transferring people from one field to another field. Of course, such activities are not directly related to the municipality; however, since they benefit the citizens, they can be relevant to them too.” 

"In my opinion,” noted Erjaei, “the whole country should proceed quickly towards the digital economy and cyber space, and of course Mashhad is not an exception in the country. For this aim, we need a considerably extensive program for Iran, which I believe does not exist yet. Therefore, this aim demands acceleration since once, we were dealing with immigration in a physical sense in which the elites used to leave Iran, but now we provide the elites with services and even retirement pensions and yet, through the internet, they can work 24/7 for foreigner countries.”

The Mayor of Mashhad continued: “Mashhad is now a content production hub in different fields, including animation and online content production, such as applications and the web.”

"We need to expand our economy and lead forward. My suggestion is that more efforts should be made in the two areas, including digital economy portfolio development and technology transfer," he added, approving the policy of Growth Centers. 

As his concluding remarks, the Mayor of Mashhad announced his eagerness to cooperate with ICT Park: "If the Park is an international e-commerce center and a growth center for the internationalization of Iranian companies, we are ready for further cooperate. Of course, providing a shared office beside other facilities can also be considered possible;” however, he noted “these items are up to the government and not us as local managers.” 

It should be mentioned that the Information and Communication Technology Park hosts 55 active companies in three sites, including Mashhad, Alborz, and Semnan, with the Mashhad site having a share of 10 active technology companies.