Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey

Hisarcıklıoğlu attended the METU Entrepreneurship and Innovation Support Program’s opening ceremony at the METU Culture and Congress Center. TOBB President M. Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu stated that the largest shortcoming in Turkey is bringing knowledge and economy together, which the METU Entrepreneurship and Innovation Support Program has successfully addressed.

Hisarcıklıoğlu said that the entrepreneurship culture is newly forming in Turkey and that nobody would want to be an industrialist or trader in the beginning of the 1900’s when the favorable professions were military and bureaucratic.
Stating that despite being the defeated side in WWII, 30 years later, Japan and Germany are among the top three economies of the world, Hisarcıklıoğlu said:

“The secret of this success is the entrepreneurship spirit enkindled before the war. Why is entrepreneurship important? We see that the whole world is in a state of change. Boundaries in production, information and marketing are dissolving. There is formidable competition between countries. You lose if you stop. The ones to get ahead will be the ones with the most successful entrepreneurs.”

Stating that imagination is essential for entrepreneurship, Hisarcıklıoğlu said that there are limits to everything conceivable except imagination. Hisarcıklıoğlu stated that Mark Zuckerberg founded the billion-Dollar enterprise, Facebook with a single computer in a garage and that international brands such as Apple and Google were also the products of imagination.

Hisarcıklıoğlu, stating that the new generation is knowledgeable and open to change, said that there is no reason every young Turk will be a Zuckerberg and went on:

“Our greatest shortcoming was bringing knowledge and economy together and METU has achieved this. There is no need for money in order to be an entrepreneur. Money can always be found when there is a new good idea. Waste is wrong in our culture but we are underutilizing women in the workforce. We must increase the number of entrepreneurs as well as increasing the number of women entrepreneurs. Women form only 6% of our members, we must increase this ratio. We established the TOBB Women Entrepreneurs’ Council for this reason. We want to provide successful role model for women in this way."
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