11-03-2025
Teacher wins national award for innovation management
STAFF REPORTER
Muscat, March 11
The 11th National Research Award (NRA), organised by the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation (MoHERI), celebrated some of the brightest and innovative minds in Oman. 'Challenges Facing Innovation Management in Omani Higher Education Institutions from the Point of View of Innovative Students' by principal investigator Marhouna bint Hamed al Maqbaliyah, a teacher at the Ministry of Education and a PhD student of Sultan Qaboos University, won the award in the Young Researcher's category.
She said the study is aimed to identify the major challenges confronting innovation management in higher education institution.
Her research team conducted interviews with 30 students who had previously participated in competitions or received research funding from the MoHERI. To ensure a comprehensive perspective, the study considered diversity in terms of years of participation and the stages achieved by the student teams or company.
As for the main findings of the study, results revealed several intertwined challenges facing innovation management, and issues emerging in one stage often extend to the subsequent stages highlighting the importance of planning from the outset.
She elaborated that the challenges of the first stage focused on innovative ideas exploration, team formation and suitable supervisor selection. The second stage's challenges were an extension of the first phase and included personal challenges, policies and regulations, human and financial resources, logistics support, coordination among entities, incubator, knowledge and data access, and challenges related to decision-makers. In the third stage, the challenges included a lack of follow-up after competitions, entities' readiness limitation to adopt innovations, and human resources challenges as well as market and societal challenges.
She proposed several recommendations, including giving more attention to innovation management through pre-planning for the three stages and developing specific policies for innovative students to facilitate their work during the three phases.
The research project was published in the Educational Studies journal of the University of Jordan. The research team consisted of Prof Aisha bint Salim al Harthiyah, Dr Khalaf bin Marhoon al Abri and Prof Said bin Sulaiman al Dhafri.
Marhouna al Maqbali mentioned that 'winning the National Research Award serves as a motivation to continue completing the whole research project and an incentive for conducting further research projects that contribute, even in a small way, to serving the country. Moreover, the success of this project highlights the voice of innovative students, whom I hope will receive greater attention from stakeholders, as they are the future and promising hope of the Sultanate of Oman.'
