Welcome letter

In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful!

Assalamu aleikum Dear brothers and sisters!

Currently, OIC countries pay much attention to supporting science, education, and building mechanisms to accelerate innovation-based development. One of the most priority mechanisms in the perspective of Eurasian Fund for Innovation Development (EFID) is creating favorable conditions for the search, selection and development of talented people and providing opportunities for their work in their own countries to prevent "brain drain", as well as attracting leading experts from all over the world to working on areas of science and technology which will be recognized as a priority for OIC countries. We witness this practice of attracting leading specialistsin Dubai Airport. With the well-thought-out efforts of government, such working conditions were created that today thousands of the best air traffic controllers, technicians and builders from all over the world work there. Thanks to their contribution, one of the world's largest airports was built and successfully operates at the place where a bare desert stood before.

To continue this strategy, the Fund proposes to create
• a network of model innovation centers aimed at the search, selection and specialized training of talented unconventional people (school-age and older) and
• favorable conditions for the profound development of their inventive personality by granting access to advanced knowledge and communication with leading specialists in the priority areas of knowledge.

As in the case of Dubai Airport, such conditions need to be created in innovative centers that not only local talented youth, but also leading experts from all over the world sought for getting there. Undoubtedly, creation of such innovation centers requires serious funding, which in turn requires appropriate government programs adopted. In addition, Islamic countries have an additional advantage over other countries since they have a well-developed system of Islamic financing via which successful Muslims can provide financial support to innovation centers both on a mutually beneficial basis (participation in profits from innovation activity) and on the basis of Sadaka donations for the benefit of science and technology aimed at prosperity and raising intellectual authority of the Islamic world.
A brief description of the need for and general principles of opening the above-mentioned innovation centers in modern context is given in the Presentation of the Conception for the OIC Innovation Capacity Building and the Action Plan for the Establishment of Innovation Centers of OIC Countries which were prepared by the EFID as a private initiative and submitted for review to various private foundations and governments of OIC concerned with domestic innovation. This EFID initiative is an attempt to find a way of reviving that level of Muslim science and technology which was one of the highest in a certain period of time but, unfortunately, was lost in modern history. Today, science and technology in OIC countries is lagging far behind the developed Western countries. This lag not only creates serious obstacles to prosperity among Muslim world, but also diminishes the authority of Islam as a religion in the eyes of surrounding people who increasingly perceive peoples of Islamic countries not as bearers of advanced knowledge and wisdom, as was once in medieval world, but as non-educated peoples of technologically backward countries tailing along modern civilization.

Moreover, this lag is particularly dangerous in the future as it leads to the outflow of talented young people from Muslim countries to the leading technological centers of the West. This leads not only to today's weakening of the innovative capacity of OIC countries, but also to further degradation of overall level of education, science and technology as the most scientifically gifted people go to the West as they can realize their creative potential only there. Unfortunately, they will not be able to transfer their knowledge and experience to new generations in their home countries. And therefore every year this technological gap will grow. If we do not reverse this situation in the near future by creating innovative centers in OIC with better working conditions than those in leading Western innovation centers, all other measures of state support will be meaningless since there will just be no one to give grants and provide support to. The reason is that talented people will just leave to where they can realize themselves. As a result, OIC countries will remain countries consuming achievements of modern civilization that will be developed in the West (including using the brain of the most talented Muslims) and sold to OIC as finished high-tech products in exchange for oil, gas and other natural resources.

With regard to the foregoing, as a part of the OIC Summit on Science and Technology in Astana we propose to consider including to the Summit Agenda the Action Plan for the Establishment of Innovation Centers of OIC Countries prepared by the EFID within the Conception for the OIC Innovation Capacity Building. If necessary, EFID staff are ready to be actively engaged as a part of a working group in preparing materials on the Action Plan for the Establishment of Innovation Centers of OIC for consideration within the framework of the Summit. In addition, EFID will be grateful to all those concerned who wish peace and prosperity to the Muslim countries for their feedback and recommendations for improving the proposed ways of developing science and technology for raising the welfare and image of the Islamic world.

Sincerely Yours,

Bulat Kassymov

8 (777) 663-22-22
8 (778) 663-22-22
info@efid.kz
Astana, Kazakhstan

Conception for the OIC Innovation Capacity Building

General provisions:

1. At all times, everything new (be it music, painting, scientific or technologic discoveries, any inventions and innovations) was created only by particularly gifted, talented individuals. Talented people shape the development of any facets of civilization. Music is written by composers, poems are written by poets, pictures are painted by artists, songs are sung by singers, etc. In every domain, very talented people can create masterpieces that go to the treasury of the achievements of human civilization. But in order the composer to make his masterpiece to be performed for hundreds of years, it is necessary to give the opportunity to a small person who is endowed with the composer talent to study musical literacy, hear musical works created before him or her by great composers. And in this case only there is a probability that the talent will manifest and humanity will receive another beautiful melody. The same can be said about any kind of activity. To grow a talented person (composer, chess player, athlete, singer, artist), it is necessary to provide access to a wide a range of young children to developing their talents from an early age.Whereas in most developed countries such conditions are created for musicians, sportsmen, chess players, and singers, there are virtually no such conditions for searching, selecting and developing talented inventors and innovators. Therefore, the chance for a talented inventor to develop his talent and make a great discovery is just as small as if Bach or Mozart were not given the opportunity to play musical instruments and people would expect them to create musical masterpieces. And imagine how many such Bachs and Mozarts would not be found by the world only because they were born in poor families and had no access to music education. Just as the world would have hardly recognized Capablanca or Alekhin if they had not had access to chess as a child.

2. Today, many activities bring huge profits to talented people and their environment (managers, producers, coaches, administrators) owing to globalization since talented people gain access to a huge audiencevia television and the Internet. Who would have thought 30 years ago that a football player can earn 60 million euros a year like Lionel Messi? His story in general is very revealing in this sense. He was born in a poor family of a worker and a cleaner. But since five years he had played football in an amateur club under the guidance of his father. At the age of 11, he was diagnosed with an illness that required $900 a month for treatment. Neither the parents nor the children's club in which Messi played then had such money. At the urging of one of the shareholders of Barcelona club, Messi's father drove him to a show at this club where the game of 13-year-old Messi made such an impression on the club's leaders that they fully paid Messi's treatment in the amount of about 90 thousand euros per year as well as his relocation to and accommodation in Spain. In fact, only financial assistance to young Messi allowed him to realize his talent and become not only one of the most successful and highly paid football players in the world, but also bring huge profits to his club and shareholders who believed in his talent.

In this case, all the components of success are visible:
- a talented child;
- opportunity to play football in a children's club where he was able to demonstrate his talent;
- getting noticed in one of the world's clubs;
- financing of moving and living in Europe and expensive treatment by the shareholders of the club for possible future success;
- playing with talented teammates led by excellent coaches.

If we remove at least one of these components, the world is unlikely to see the game of Messi which he showed in Barcelona.

3. Similarly, real development of innovation in any country requires conditions for the search and development of talented inventors. Since no one can predict in advance which child from which family will become a genius inventor tomorrow, such selection system is needed that allows early search of talented inventors, providing them with access to modern knowledge and training under the guidance of experienced teachers.
4. To play football today, just like a hundred years ago, you need two teams, a football field, balls, uniforms, coaches, referees(since football is a game in the real world which cannot be played remotely). But, for example, to develop creative abilities in chess today, it is not necessary to go to a club and play on wooden boards with a rival face-to-face. Today you can play chess without leaving your house; it's enough to have access to a computer and the Internet. Recently, the world witnessed rapid development of computer games, with world championships with large prize pools being held where young talented players from different countries earn serious money, training at home and playing in teams whose members can be located in different parts of the world.
5. Invention is a kind of talent as well. It is rather like the talent of a composer who creates a melody that did not exist before. A talented composer creates talented hits, a genius composer creates genius works. Genius composers are born very rarely just as genius inventors, and it is very important to find and timely support young talent, since if any great composers were not given opportunity to play musical instruments in childhood and listen to the music of his predecessors, then they would have hardly realized their natural talent. Inventor (innovator) is a person whose brain is designed so that he or she finds patterns more easily than others and can combine them in new mechanisms or devices that humanity did not know yesterday. This is also a talent that is not given to everyone. But in today's world talented inventors cannot show themselves in childhood as they have practically no access to scientific and technical knowledge, since mankind has gone so far ahead in the development of technical knowledge that for learning already open knowledge only you need to painstakingly study for many years in school and university. However, successful study of knowledge already discovered by someone and ability to think and make discoveries and inventions are two different things.Creating a beautiful melody or playing a melody on a musical instrument written by someone is a different thing as well. That's why there are always more good musicians in the world than good composers. Creating a new melody is much more difficult than playing it. Therefore, today there are many excellent virtuoso musicians who can perfectly play the most complicated musical compositions of different composers, but they cannot write any beautiful melodies themselves. Conversely, there are composers who can compose a beautiful melody, but they cannot play it as well as a virtuoso musician or sing it as a good singer. That is, in the world of music on the one hand there are composers who compose melodies, and on the other hand there are singers and performers who sing or perform these tunes for the public. It is a very rare case that a singer is a good composer himself. The same thing happens in science and technology. Successful knowledge does not mean creative thinking. Therefore, there are so many engineers in the world who can work with already existing formulas or create mechanisms by already known principles, but few people who are able to create something fundamentally new and breakthrough. Therefore, training and developing creative people in the same pattern as regular engineers is a wrong thing, just as you cannot develop a composer forcing him to sing well other people's songs.So you can train a singer, but not a composer. Composer should be encouraged to compose new tunes, not to sing other people's songs. Let his songs be simple and inelaborate in the beginning, but they should be borne by the composer himself. Surely, there must be a system of selecting and listening to such melodies by leading composers who are able to detect great potential and talent in a simple melody. The same idea can apply to inventing. Mind-numbing longstanding memorization of already open formulas and theorems cripples a creative personality. What is more, today's test system virtually kills any pursuance of creativity as it leaves no room for creativity. You just have to guess one correct answer. And who said that it is a correct one? Who has proved this? Maybe in some cases it is wrong? Maybe it is correct only from the point of view of science and technology in 2017, and in five years it will be outdated and hence wrong?
6. For example, Lobachevsky created his "non-Euclidean geometry" in the 1830s and it was not recognized by contemporaries for almost forty years. His discovery was mocked and denied by most mathematicians of his time. Nevertheless, Lobachevsky despite everything continued to develop his theory as he was a creator by nature. It was only after his death when the world gradually matured to an understanding of his ideas. It was hundreds of professors-mathematicians who for almost forty years could not understand the novelty of his ideas while being considered good mathematicians, successfully defending their doctoral dissertations and knowing well the previously discovered formulas of Euclidean geometry. They could not even understand for a long time the new knowledge that contradicted their knowledge, being far from discovering something new. So today's education system brings up such professors who are experts in old truths and are good at counting and calculating by old formulas and theorems, but as a rule incapable of discovering fundamentally new knowledge which often contradicts the old one. Today's education system kills Lobachevskys and Einsteins and generates thousands of intelligent knowledgeable "scientists" who know a lot but, unfortunately, cannot discover anything new. These are a kind of singers in the music world who have rich repertoire and are good at singing old songs, but cannot create any new songs.
7. Proceeding from the foregoing, it is necessary to build such a system of selection and development of creative personalities that would be aimed at searching and encouraging not "singers" but "composers" in the world of technology. Therefore, we should look not for those who can learn much and quickly and it is good in answering a lesson of already known truths, but those who are inclined to creative unconventional independent thinking. To do this, we need to create a system similar to the old-time school olympiads in mathematics, physics, chemistry, but select winners not from among people with an ability to solve problems by previously known ways, but creative thinkers and problem solvers. Therefore, the tasks should not be so much knowledge-oriented, but rather focus on smart and unconventional thinking. And only those people who have enough such qualities - unconventional thinking and creative problem solving - can create such tasks and evaluate the beauty and originality of their solutions. It is just like a future genius composer can be taught only by another composer, maybe not as talented as the student, but the composer who is able to compose melodies and appreciate the beauty of the created new tunes.
8. After that, such creative gifted people need two important things: free access to scientific and technical information in their mother tongue and opportunity to take part in online lectures in seminars of leading experts in various fields. This will boost rapid growth of talented inventors at the highest possible speed, limited in this case only by their individual abilities.
9. Next, we need to build a system of cash incentives for success in this area. First, through grants and prizes for original ways of solving various problems judged not by "right-wrong" scale, but by "creatively different - patterned" scale.
10. Then, it is necessary to give the opportunity to creatively gifted people selected by this method to join creative teams of interests in various promising areas of science and technology that are recognized as priority for financing. For this, the principle must be laid that the team is selected individually for each task, at the discretion of the people themselves. If a problem is solved, then the entire team receives a prize equally, regardless of who contributed more to the problem solution. This will help to avoid unnecessary disputes. The whole team should be aimed at solving the problem, therefore all the members should be as open for discussion as possible.Otherwise, if there is a fear that someone's actions may seem more weighty, there may be rivalries between the team. There may accordingly appear hiding some of the guesswork or information by an individual from other team members to think through the idea and provide it in the most ready-made form, instead of immediately brainstorming it with the team for group discussion.
11. After a certain time, leaders will naturally stand out gathering research teams around them to solve certain tasks. In this case, the tasks for such teams will be problems in real economy, which require fresh non-standard solutions as a result of which a significant effect can be achieved in saving resources, reducing costs, and improving consumer properties of goods, etc.
12. In fact, we are talking about building an innovation building system by analogy with the system of music and football industry.

Download the conception and action plan

Media about us:

Kazakhstan Channel report on Alatau harrow tilth instrument produced by our company

Khabar Channel report on the Children's Anti-Tuberculosis Clinic built in Semey, Eastern Kazakhstan by our company for grant provided by Saudi Arabia

24 Kz and Kazakhstan channels reports on "Business & innovations-2013" International Science Conference where the energy efficient construction and engineering technologies were presented

Kazakhstan Channel report on signing a Memorandum with Samruk-Kazyna Real Estate Fund

Kazakhstan Channel report on Alatau harrow tilth instrument produced by our company

24-Kz Channel reports on dome technology of house construction and on the sewage facilities plant

Biography of The Founder