Leading business school to help open centre in Abu Dhabi

ABU DHABI // One of America's best-known business schools, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, is to help open a centre in the capital to encourage entrepreneurship. The school is launching the initiative through a tie-up with the Centre for Excellence in Applied Research and Training (Cert), the commercial arm of the Higher Colleges of Technology, a federal university.

Academic staff from Wharton will visit for research projects. The centre, to be located at Cert's headquarters near Abu Dhabi Men's College, will be called the Wharton-Cert Entrepreneurship and Family Business Research Centre. Dr Tayeb Kamali, the chief executive of Cert and vice chancellor of the HCT, said entrepreneurship "has always been part" of the HCT's teaching. He said the new centre would ensure the subject became "an important element" within the country as a whole.

"It will produce graduates that can help the economy," he said. Wharton and Cert will collaborate to produce an Arabic version of the online business journal Knowledge@Wharton that will look at business trends in the region. The journal is currently also available in Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese. Prof Raphael Amit, a professor of management at Wharton, will help to set up the centre. "There are two main elements - the research element for the creation of knowledge in entrepreneurship in family businesses and the dissemination of knowledge," he said.

dbardsley@thenational.ae