I’ve visited early this year MS innovation center in Cairo, the people who work there are nice and smart, one of the managers have several patents, (The Microsoft innovation center in Egypt is “interested in applied research and development initiatives in the Middle East and Africa “and they have a small team about 17, mostly c++ geeks, http://bit.ly/2Ud7k they also have image cup competition).

But there are no massive R&D centers like the ones these companies have in “Israel”. I totally agree with you “we need R&D center that employing local professionals ,doing things such as reverse engineering to make sure that we capture the knowledge and the execution capability.” This will help create the poll of engineers than can then come up with new innovations and start their own companies. –point= “Israel” between “ “ not a political statement but to point out it is a conflict area/name-.

I did a research back in the day about the IT sector in “Israel” for a class at university, to sum it up these people had polices to help the tech sector since decades, they deployed different plans and projects since back in the day, in the Arab world all the tech talk is recent, or at least some actions are happing recently. In “Israel” for example, they have a position called the Office of Chief Scientists, does any country has such a position? One of the success factors for the ICT industry in “Israel” is its military, where many eng. developed or worked in some telecom systems for the military for example , in which later they span off for civilian use.
The problem is that each country is doing it alone, they have not figured a regional plan to support Tech innovation yet, if they agree and lobby I do not think Multinational IT companies won’t open R&D centers in any suitable Arab country.

You can read my post about the IT industry and the edgy discussion here: http://arabcrunch.com/2009/04/towards-a-vibrant-startup-based-it-sector-ecosystem-in-the-arab-world.html

This website
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=258636&fid=954 has good info about IT sector in “Israel”. Lailatov .

These type of transactions happen all the time, but maybe not in such a clear setting. For example, I work for Boeing, and when we sell airplanes to India or China, they always put a condition to get some of our supply procurement from their markets, or to build some parts in their markets.

Great step by the Egyptian Minister, other Arabs should follow. I agree that we need more technology transfer, but more importantly we need knowledge transfer. Bringing an R&D center to the region without employing local professionals won’t do much. Even if we do get some jobs, that also is not enough. We need to learn how to do reverse engineering to make sure that we capture the knowledge and the execution capability.

Here is a good question for everybody:
How come Intel, Cisco, Motorola, Yahoo, Google, etc.. have R&D centers in Israel, and they only have Sales & Customer support centers in the Middle East?

Please, don’t bring politics into the topic – keep the discussion in the realm of technology and economics !