Strategic sustainability of social entrepreneurship as applied in LIRA technopole, fostering value-added industrial-oriented applied research :

Abstract

This project studies the strategic sustainability of establishing a national not-for-profit Mechatronics Technopole under the umbrella of the Lebanese Industrial Research Achievements (LIRA) program, as a social venture. It covers the relevant bases in social entrepreneurship literature and then moves on to defining the proposed ‘social’ business model for the LIRA Technopole and studying its sustainability by means of an exploratory business plan taken at a snapshot in time, year 2007. Started in 1997 and officially recognized in 2002 as joint public-private collaboration between MoI and ALI, the program is the strongest player in its field, tying the most influential parties together: MoI, ALI, CNRS and the universities and vocational schools of Lebanon. The LIRA program aims at building effective cooperation between industry, academia and research centers to address the RandD needs of the Lebanese industry and empower the industrial sector with innovations leading to the promotion of competitiveness and productivity. It is strongly networked in the Lebanese academic and industrial sectors through solid partnerships. This strong backbone will give the LIRA Technopole an unshakable network of support and influence, granting it access to private fundraising and public sector support. The LIRA Technopole aims at nurturing an applied research culture in academia serving the Lebanese Industrial sector towards moving into a competitive and productive knowledge-based economy. The LIRA Technopole will achieve its objectives through 2 types of activities. The first, “student projects”, is the essence of its existence, its purpose. The technopole will provide the machines, equipment, space, technology, knowledge and systems necessary to receive all the graduating engineering and engineering-science students – from universities and vocational schools operating in Lebanon – to implement their academic research projects into industrial prototypes for free. The only 2 conditions are pursu