Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ICCI) Senior Vice President Muhammad Naved Malik has said that the developed world has achieved phenomenal economic growth by promoting academia-industry linkages and we have to adopt the same approach to strengthen our economy. He observed this while talking to Institute of Space Technology (IST) Vice Chancellor Imran Rahman, during his visit to IST along with a delegation. Khalid Chaudhry, Asher Hafiz, Dildar Abbasi and M Fahim Khan were in the delegation. Office of Research, Innovation & Commercialisation Director General Dr Zafar M Khan and IST Consultant Dr Zahoor Sarwar were also present at the occasion. The final year students of IST displayed their projects to the delegation members. Muhammad Naveed Malik said that universities have latest pool of knowledge and they should help in resolving the key issues of the local industry. He emphasised that universities should focus on applied research that would help in addressing major problems of the society. The ICCI senior vice president said that over 60 percent of our population was comprised of youth while thousands of youngsters were entering the job market every year. However, our public and private sectors were not capable to absorb them in jobs. He said to cope with the issue of rising unemployment; universities should focus on fostering entrepreneurship in students that would enable them to become job creators instead of job seekers. Speaking on the occasion IST Vice Chancellor Imran Rahman said that universities could help in improving the productivity, efficiency and competitiveness of industry for which strengthening academia-industry linkages was important. He said that research departments of universities were conducting good research in various field, but due to lack of coordination, local industry was not taking benefits of their research work. He urged that industry should share its problems with universities so that academia could play role in addressing them. He hoped that ICCI’s efforts would contribute in improving academia-industry linkages that would lead to accelerating the economic growth and strengthening the economy. At the occasion, ICCI delegation members gave useful tips to IST students for achieving success in business field. Published in Daily Times, July 13th 2018.