By Olga Batran
This is not surprising when we take into consideration that half of the local economic establishments*3 are small traditional, frequently informal firms, geared towards the domestic market – with low potential for growth and competition and limited employment capacity.
B-Hub’s model taps into the enormous knowledge capital of Birzeit University faculty and students and uses it to support small enterprises. Through B-Hub, university student teams, supported by faculty members, engage in solving the problems that micro enterprises are facing.
Instead of producing consulting reports with recommendations on what the enterprises should do, B-Hub supports companies in developing and implementing effective solutions after conducting a thorough diagnosis of the business performance and the micro-market context in which the enterprise operates. These solutions cover various business and technical areas, including production process optimization, family business restructuring, inventory management, realistic business planning, creative marketing plans, crisis management, and so on. These areas of expertise are often inaccessible to local small enterprises through conventional consulting models. Another crucial service is R&D for product development, which is vital for local companies that tend to replicate existing product designs from the market without much improvement. This service is also central to B-Hub’s industry exposure model, as R&D assignments involve students from various university faculties, especially scientific and technical specializations, who have the fewest opportunities to get practical skills. Examples of R&D projects that have been completed for local manufacturing and agrotech companies include methods for paper recycling, wastewater treatment, recipes for natural cosmetics, design for production lines and machines, electricity-saving techniques, and the development of chemical formulas for detergents, polymers, and isolation materials as well as innovative construction materials.
This model of exposing students to the industry not only benefits companies but also provides a highly practical learning venue for students and broadens the horizons for faculty members. In addition, it stimulates an entrepreneurial mindset among students, inspiring them with ideas for starting their own businesses. In fact, several B-Hub startups have been launched as a result of R&D assignments, where students identified niches where they could apply their technical and engineering knowledge. Moreover, this model naturally cultivates twenty-first-century skills, such as problem-solving, communication, research, negotiation, and analytical skills.
*1 “Distribution of Higher Education Institutions in Palestine by Type of Institution and Region, 2021/2022,” Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), available at https://www.pcbs.gov.ps/Portals/_Rainbow/Documents/Higher_Education_2021_01E.html.
*2 “Press Release on the Results of the Labour Force Survey: Third Quarter (July – September, 2022) Round,” PCBS, available at https://www.pcbs.gov.ps/post.aspx?lang=en&ItemID=4353.
*3 The total number of economic establishments in Palestine is about 146,000, among these, 94,000 are private, of which 83,000 are micro and small enterprises, employing 1 to 10 persons. See “Preliminary Results of the Population, Housing and Establishments Census, 2017,” PCBS, 2018, available at chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.pcbs.gov.ps/Downloads/book2364-1.pdf.
