By: Zinhle Mngadi

The Durban University of Technology in partnership with the eThekwini Municipality and other stakeholders invite students and innovation thinkers to an Innovation Summit to be held at the Moses Mabhida Stadium on Friday with the aim to assist young entrepreneurs to grow in business.

In launching this year’s summit, the eThekwini Municipality has partnered with DUT, the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the Technology Innovation Agency, Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry, IBM and Mahindra.

The mayor of eThekwini, Cllr James Nxumalo said that the purpose of this summit is to ignite entrepreneurs with tertiary students and scholars, providing a platform for knowledge sharing, capacity building and increasing innovation awareness in the province.

He further emphasised that the summit is what young businesses need in order to grow and sustain their businesses.

“This is one aspect that will be addressing challenges, presenting opportunities, and capacitating business owners to help them grow their businesses by making it more sustainable,” said Nxumalo.

The Chair of the Forum, Dr Anneline Chetty said that the summit will kick off with the Innovation Trek on Friday, followed by the Innovation Conference the next Wednesday and Thursday whereby groups of four will be coming through to discuss innovative solutions to the challenges faced by the various areas they had visited over the days. The group with the best innovative solutions will win a prize during the Innovative Awards.

Dr Chetty further said that the most important contribution that makes Innovation so successful, are lessons learnt from the people who make Innovation possible.

The Innovation Trek takes place at the Moses Mabhida Stadium on Friday 6^th June 2014 at 8:00am.