Wamda and General Electric (GE), one of the world’s leading technology companies, are joining hands to enable and support the industrial entrepreneurship movement in the Middle East and North Africa. Through various activities, the partnership will accelerate and incubate the entrepreneurship ecosystem in the region in the spaces of advanced manufacturing, industrial internet, healthcare, clean technology, oil and gas, and transportation, among many others.

For the birth and growth of any entrepreneurial ecosystem, strong community support is an essential element, and this partnership will be supporting entrepreneurs working to innovate in these sectors.

With entrepreneurial activities in these industrial areas being previously disconnected and under-reported in the MENA region, Wamda and GE want to play a role in helping entrepreneurs grow by inspiring enthusiasm and motivation, empowering them through direct engagement, and guiding them in their growth.

“Wamda has been supporting entrepreneurship communities since its inception,” says Habib Haddad, Wamda’s CEO. “But we are particularly excited about this partnership because it is forward looking. GE sees the future and the growing industries before anyone else. With that in mind, GE and Wamda are set to build entrepreneurship communities that are also inventing the future and innovating in the industries of tomorrow.”

Today, at the Future of Work: Middle East event, Wamda and GE publicly announced MEMakers, their partnership to support and promote industrial entrepreneurship in MENA [Tweet this].

Hosted on Wamda’s online platform, MEMakers will tell stories, announce news, provide information on the latest industry trends, and conduct interviews with experts to extract tips and advice. Through MEMakers, entrepreneurs, engineering physical products, tinkering with hardware, and dabbling in big data, will now have a platform on which to celebrate their work and gain exposure.

In January of this year, one of the first activities to take place between GE and Wamda was a roundtable discussion with entrepreneurs from the MENA region and Beth Comstock, GE's Chief Marketing Officer, at Masdar City in Abu Dhabi. (Check our video post here).

During the roundtable, held at the GE Ecomagination Center, Comstock said that the future of innovation lies at the junction of the digital and the physical, where sensors on machines provide continuous feedback that can be analyzed and used to increase efficiency. She added that the innovation landscape is changing so rapidly that an entirely new approach to innovation is needed.  

Other activities will be announced throughout the year, stay tuned!