"I was glad to participate in the second IACMENA workshop and see how, once again, research can break all walls. Within 15 minutes of the first meeting of the Israeli, Arab, Iranian and Turkish participants (over a fine French dinner) everyone became good friends...The concept of IACMENA , which to a large extent resembles a Hackathon...was again highly effective and 10 joint teams had great research proposals in less than 36 hours this is really impressive. Many of the projects use strategy and entrepreneurship tools to address problems related to the Middle East such as: Palestinian workers compensation in Israel, minority owned SMEs, and helping refugees through entrepreneurship so it is not only the (important) research collaboration that takes place but also the thinking of how to make th MENA region better."
- Professor Niron Hashai, Senior Faculty, The Asper Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
"The workshop was super fun, energizing and thought provoking, and we are looking forward to working together on this project"
- Deniz Tuncalp and Tammar Zilber, Workshop Participants
Building on the success of our inaugural workshop in 2015, SMS IACMENA 2017 second workshop at INSEAD, in Fontainebleau, France offered participating junior faculty members a unique opportunity to meet again. They collaborated, exchanged experiences, and continued their research projects about the region. Several senior faculty members, leaders in the fields of strategy, organizations, and entrepreneurship, joined us to continue supporting and supervising the workshop teams.
We are privileged to have secured the participation of several senior scholars, including Michael Brimm, Javier Gimeno, Dovev Lavie, Anita McGahan, Brian Silverman, Andrew Shipilov, and Shaker Zahra.
Junior faculty from Egypt, Israel, Tunisia, Iran, and Syria, and Turkey were in attendance. While the workshop offered participants a distinct opportunity to share their preliminary findings of their research projects they had coined back at Cambridge in 2015, to newly joined members, it offered them opportunity to launch new projects. All teams received critiques on work progress and to learn, apply, and develop theory in the context of the MENA region. It is hoped these efforts will inform academia, policy makers, and business with insights on what and how to help in creating supporting environments for new businesses and in growing established enterprises.