Finns and Pakistanis join Innovation Journalism Program

Pakistan’s Minister of State for Finance announced that the country is joining SCIL’s Innovation Journalism Fellows Program in his recent keynote address at The Competitiveness Institute’s 8 th Annual Conference in Hong Kong. The announcement followed on the heels of Finland’s announcement that it, too, was joining the unique Stanford program that places foreign journalists at U.S. publishing giants to work in the emerging field of innovation journalism.

“Our goal is to increase public focus on innovation and competitiveness, business and technology,” said Omar Ayub Kahn.

“The Government of Pakistan’s wish is to build networks between leading Pakistani innovation journalists and their peers from other countries, in order to strengthen the Pakistani awareness of innovation in other countries, as well as to make the other countries more aware of Pakistan.”

The Pakistan Competitiveness Support Fund will organize the Pakistani Innovation Journalism Program with initial support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Government of Pakistan.

The Competitiveness Support Fund oversees Pakistan’s competitiveness initiatives, aimed at improving the overall competitiveness of the Pakistani economy. The government of Pakistan will collaborate with the Fund to establish a National Innovation and Competitiveness Council with relevant ministries, leading private sector representatives and key universities.

The Pakistani fellows will join other Innovation Journalism Fellows during the winter quarter of 2006 to work in some of the world’s best newsrooms covering innovation stories. Fellows also participate in international workshops and will present papers at the Third Conference on Innovation Journalism to be held at Stanford April 5-7, 2006. (Contact David Nordfors at: nordfors@stanford.edu for more information on the conference.)

The concept of Innovation Journalism was introduced two years ago by Stanford researcher and Innovation Journalism Program Director David Nordfors, who is special advisor to the Director General of the Swedish Government Agency for Innovation Systems, VINNOVA. VINNOVA started the first such program and has provided technical and financial support to SCIL at Stanford in developing the concept and program.

This fall Nordfors joined technology and journalism leaders in a roundtable discussion on the field of innovation journalism. Their conversation was made into a DVD, which is now available for $10.00 on amazon.com or at VINNOVA. Participants in the roundtable include Internet guru Vincent Cerf, Red Herring founder Lee Bruno, PC World’s Harry McCracken, Whitfield Diffie of Sun Microsystems and several other local and Swedish luminaries.

For more information: http://innovationjournalism.org/

View The Des Moines Register's article covering Innovation Journalism and Program Director David Nordfors: "Journalists need to get down to business--- innovative business" by David Elbert.

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