In 2015, Qatar sought to strengthen its ICT innovation ecosystem by equipping startups with the skills and structures needed to compete in global markets. Innovety partnered with ictQATAR to diagnose innovation readiness, identify market expansion opportunities, and design a tailored innovation and entrepreneurship strategy, aligning with the objectives of our Socioeconomic Development Strategy services.
We complemented this with hands-on training and masterclasses on business modeling, pitching, financial planning, and IP, alongside one-to-one coaching to help entrepreneurs refine their strategies.
The result was a more cohesive innovation pathway for ICT startups—embedding IP logic into business planning, enhancing entrepreneurial skills, and positioning ictQATAR as a catalyst for sustained innovation-led growth.
By 2015, Qatar’s ICT sector was buzzing with entrepreneurial energy but lacked the structures, strategies, and skills to translate ideas into investable ventures. While the Ministry of ICT (ictQATAR) aimed to position startups as engines of diversification, most founders advanced their products without clear business models, financial plans, or IP strategies.
Without a national innovation readiness framework, efforts remained fragmented, leaving promising ventures vulnerable to duplication, weak investor appeal, and limited scalability. The absence of prior IP searches or protection strategies meant entrepreneurs risked building businesses on unprotected ideas, undermining both their competitiveness and Qatar’s ambition to become a knowledge-driven economy.
Key pain points
Innovety began by conducting a full innovation readiness assessment for ictQATAR, mapping existing structures, capabilities, and gaps. This diagnostic identified where startups struggled most—business planning, market positioning, and IP strategy—and highlighted untapped opportunities for market expansion.
Based on the findings, Innovety designed a bespoke innovation strategy for ictQATAR. This clarified the sector’s growth pathways, prioritized resources, and introduced mechanisms to align organizational practices with entrepreneurial needs.
To translate strategy into practice, Innovety delivered entrepreneurship masterclasses and specialized training. Topics included business model innovation, financial planning, pricing strategies, and pitching—equipping founders with tools to refine value propositions and strengthen investment readiness.
Recognizing the critical role of intellectual property, Innovety introduced IP prior-art searches and guided startups on protection pathways. This helped entrepreneurs anchor their ventures in defensible innovations, ensuring stronger investor appeal and market differentiation.
Alongside group sessions, Innovety provided individualized coaching, enabling startups to stress-test their models, refine pitches, and adapt strategies to real market feedback.
Finally, Innovety worked with ictQATAR to align internal processes with the new strategy, embedding innovation as a core institutional practice and ensuring sustainability beyond the program cycle.
