This year, IPB University is celebrating its 56th anniversary and featuring “Innovation for the Nation” as its main theme. In his official speech, Dr. Arif Prasetya, the rector of IPB University, explained that the campus has been trying to create a system to give an interconnection of global level that can results in updated innovation. The university must encourage the students to continue competing and facing global challenges by utilizing the innovation itself. He also emphasized that the key success of IPB University consists of three things there are inspiration, innovation, and integrity.

 

A series of events were prepared to commemorate this year IPB University’s dies natalis. Organizing an academic oration by the rector of Wageningen University (the Netherlands) was one of the highlights. Prof. Arthur P. J. Mol – the rector of Wageningen University – opted for a topic of ‘Creating Excellent Innovation Ecosystem: Role of Traditional Knowledge and Frontiers Technology.’ At the beginning of the oration, he defined the ecosystem that enables excellent innovation: it should have the three components of university development, innovation platform, and ecosystem renewal. To foster the ecosystem, he emphasized the importance of close collaboration between multiple stakeholders. In particular, he endorsed the triple helix concept which refers to a set of interactions between the scientific institutions (academia), industry sector and governments (also community) for stimulating innovation.

 

Besides pointing out the vital role of primary stakeholders, an excellent innovation ecosystem must be supported by an open-minded mindset. In practice, it is necessary to open and simplify every process for a collaboration network. Expectedly, the collaboration results, such as new knowledge, data science, and publication, will be accessible for wider targets. Those outcomes can be used as an education material and learning process which are important to accelerate the enabling ecosystem for better innovation, both in quality and quantity.