IDEAS Lebanon – To drive Lebanon towards becoming an Innovation Nation

Who We Are

IDEAS Accelerate Growth is an NGO that was created in April 2018 under Decree 995 with a mission to enrich the conversation between Lebanon’s public sector, private sector, academia, entrepreneurs, and innovation ecosystems, in order to set in motion Lebanon’s advancement on several vital pillars of national competitiveness, with technology as an underlying driver.

What drives our IDEAS

Springing from our multi-faceted Innovation Nation program is a series of citizen-centric projects that IDEAS intends to bring to life through effectively engaging the Lebanese government, private sector, academia and entrepreneurs.

KEY PROGRAMS

The Innovation Nation

IDEAS is guided by the mission to drive forward Lebanon as an Innovation Nation. To this end, IDEAS has laid out the basic requirements for an Innovation Nation Program, requirements that are to be adopted by a stable government of professionals, collectively steering Lebanon towards higher achievement in all spheres that are of direct or indirect concern to the Lebanese citizen.

The Serail Creativity Hub

On IDEAS' initial drawing board was a multitude of “ideas” where cooperation between the public and private sector is a must for national advancement. This melting pot of concepts finally culminated in three projects sharing one common denominator of bringing technology to the public sector. Of these, the Serail Creativity Hub was to represent the epitome of such public-private cooperation, where the highest seat in Executive Government, being the Beirut Grand Serail, is earmarked to lodge the public sector’s first innovative, digital space.

To move forward with this concept, IDEAS called upon all of Lebanon’s students of Architecture to compete over designing this space, with the ultimate challenge of embedding advanced technology in the last remaining cross-vault hall at the Beirut Grand Serail, and this without disrupting any aspect of space heritage. To this end, marvelous, world class creativity by Lebanese students was on display at the Serail during the Summer of 2019.

Bawabat Al Ibtikar

Bawabat Al Ibtikar is designed to drive STEAM activities targeting public school students through a connected and structured setting managed by the schools themselves with the support of public and private sector stakeholders, as well as IDEAS.
With official approval to launch its pilot project, IDEAS has refurbished and is currently technologically equipping student space at 5 public schools across Lebanon. IDEAS has also engaged 24 private sector companies and NGOs to provide a total of 38,200 student hours free of charge for one year at these newly created technological spaces. A scalability model has been put in place to emulate this promising pilot across the nation.

Achievement Highlights

Innovation for Public Schools

Bawabat Al Ibtikar will be equipping 5 pilot program public schools with innovative technological spaces that are STEAM-ready before the end of 2019. Otherwise known as Innovation Gate…

IDEAS Engages Lebanon’s Architecture Students to Design the Serail Hub

The Serail Creativity Hall is a digital oasis being built in the heart of the Grand Serail. It will serve as a hub for creativity in all its facets whether through technological breakthroughs, innovative…

Launching the Digital Economy

IDEAS engineered the first round-table between Lebanon’s public sector and the World Bank on the subject of Digitizing Lebanon. The first Digital Economy workshop was held in the Grand Serail’s cross-vault hall (the future Serail Creativity Hub) in the presence of the World Bank, various Lebanese ministers and a host of professionals

MIT REAP hosting Agri-Tech Roundtable

IDEAS Board members played a pivotal role in steering the MIT REAP program’s discussions on Agri-Tech in Lebanon. The cross-vault hall at the Grand Serail brought together members of the Lebanese government and representatives of the Agricultural sector to discuss advancements in agricultural technology in Lebanon, and the country’s potentials in this regard.

Celebrating Innovation with Hultprize at the Grand Serail

Hultprize’s celebration of the Lebanon Impact Awards at the Grand Serail was facilitated and greatly supported by IDEAS. Hultprize had offered $250,000 in a startup competition between universities, the largest prize for social impact projects in the country. IDEAS brought the private sector to the Beirut Grand Serail for the first time to celebrate youth creativity and innovative ideas.

Serail Internship Program

The launching of Summer of Innovation in 2017 and the platform’s re-run in 2018 has resulted in a series of recruitments by the Serail Internship Program, the latest of which has led to permanent…