The students of Darüşşafaka Robotics Club, which we support as Siemens, successfully represented our country in the Robotics Competition in the United States last week and made us proud by returning with an award. Coached and supported by our colleague engineers at Siemens throughout the process, the students of Darüşşafaka Robotics Club won the “Regional Engineering Inspiration Award” at the FIRC Robotics Competition (FRC). I congratulate all Darüşşafaka students and our colleagues who supported them.

Our relations with Darüşşafaka is quite deep-rooted, dating back to 109 years ago. In 1906, postal clerk RANA Efendi, a graduate of Mekteb-i Sultani (today’s Galatasaray High School), and SABRİ Efendi, a graduate of the posts and telegraph branch of Darüşşafaka as a first-ranking student, were sent to Siemens Halske headquarters in Berlin for further training. The travel allowance and salaries of these two young men were covered by the Ottoman Ministry of Telegraphy. After returning to Turkey, they assumed various roles to provide significant contributions to the modernization of the country, including the role of members of the parliament. Sabri Efendi was also one of the close friends of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Our relations with Darüşşafaka, which started with Europe then and continued until today, are crowned with the achievements in the USA today and we are very happy to witness this.

We hope to achieve many new achievements together as we are preparing to celebrate our 160^th year in Turkey in 2016.

We announced Siemens Turkey’s first “Siemens Innovation Contest” on March 11, 2015. With this contest that we plan to organize every year from now on, we aim to encourage the young generation to think innovatively. I think the most distinctive feature of this contest is our aim to share Siemens’ innovation know-how directly with university students and to include these talented young people in Siemens innovation network. The young generation obviously needs to meet with the know-how and become a part of the global networks in this area. But before that, we should offer them certain conditions. The first of these is an unconstrained environment.
Turkey needs to take revolutionary steps in innovation and that’s why I write about this topic so often. We all know our potential, our young population, and the increasing level of education. But for the sake of progress, we should be “innovative” and do it in a “revolutionary” way. In order for the development of Turkey to be completed, we need to make progress in the field of innovation and this should be in “revolutionary innovation”, rather than “evolutionary innovation”. The first requirement to realize this is to encourage innovative thinking by offering the necessary conditions and creating an unconstrained environment. I think the greatest advantage I had in my 12 years in the United States was this unconstrained environment. No wonder that America is known as the ’starting point of innovations”. There is a reason for this: No one is criticized for coming up with an innovative, different idea; on the contrary, it is encouraged. They are always open to different ways of thinking and particularly encourage young people to do so. That’s what we need basically.
As Siemens, we will celebrate our 160th year in Turkey next year. A 160-year history in a country would be bestowed on very few institutions. We are aware of this and we are committed to ensuring the sustainability of our long history in Turkey. This can only be possible by transforming the advantages that Turkey has into values and our greatest advantage is the youth. We will continue to carry out many other initiatives like “Innovation Contest” to reveal their innovative aspects. We will provide young talents with an environment in which they can do more “research” than “development”; we will provide them with our knowledge and encourage them to think freely. I believe that the most significant step to be taken by Turkey towards development will emerge at this point. I will continue to write about innovation. I hope I will have the opportunity to share information about our young talents who participate in the Siemens Innovation Contest and whose ideas have been implemented. I believe in the youth. The future of our country will be designed by young generations who are open to development.
For detailed information about the contest: www.siemens.com.tr/innovationcontest

In April, Darüşşafaka Robotics Club’s students competed in the First Robotic Competition (FRC) in the USA and won the 3 EKOCYCLE Cube® D Printer Award. The students printed 8 different parts of the ‘Aerial Assist’ (Pilates ball thrower) robot by using the 3D Printer which is made by the students themselves. As Siemens, we supported them in both developing the robot together with our volunteering engineers and participating in the competition in the USA.

Since our country is in need of a significant breakthrough in R&D with its young and promising population, it is very meaningful for a students’ robotics club of an institution like Darüşşafaka to receive such an award. They made us very proud. Thus, I would like to congratulate all club students and mentor teachers as well as all my colleagues who voluntarily supported them. I wish them success in this year’s grand prize competition as well.

Darüşşafaka High Advisory Board gathered on September 21^st to discuss the future opportunities for Darüşşafaka Society.

In addition to my personal commitment to this educational institution, Siemens Turkey also proudly supports Darüşşafaka, which has offered a bright future to thousands of students since its establishment, with the strength and trust built in 150 years.

I sincerely hope we will have many other good examples in education like Darüşşafaka.

The school year has just ended and many students of all levels should have a short (!) time to breathe. However, are students really doing this?

A vast majority of students are already rolled up in prep schools, camps and education centers, in order to prepare themselves for the next semester. Parents are more stressed (mentally and financially) than the students themselves. Why? To give parents credit, their instinctual behavior and attention is ” not to make any mistakes” when it comes to the future of their children. For this reason they are acting upon the advice of the teachers and are using all efforts to improve their child’s academic records in the areas where their weaknesses are.   As a parent myself of three, my wife and I often question ourselves on the topic of how to find the right balance between focusing on the weak areas and nurturing the strength of our children.

Interestingly (empirically) the main dominator of a child’s success in life will be her natural talent, strengths, way of thinking and her uniqueness.  They will succeed life because of these specific talents they have. The best sales person is not one who has the highest GPA or one who comes from a top school, but more the person who has the unique talent, the individual personality to deal with customers. We look at people who solve problems differently, who are creative in addressing issues from different perspectives and angles. When we at Siemens focus on new talents for our company we do not only look at the academic grades. We look and assess the individuals unique capabilities, thinking patterns, and values  and how they solve problems differently. It is of question whether  our education system is teaching and grooming upon these aspects? Unfortunately the present system of education is still lacking in making us subservient, mechanical and deeply thoughtless. It may awaken them intellectually but inwardly it leaves them incomplete.

In our education system ( not only in Turkey) we place too much emphasis  on the explicit conventional knowledge training. Another knowledge exists however which we call Tacit knowledge. The term “tacit knowing” or “tacit knowledge” was first introduced into philosophy by Michael Polanyi in 1958 in his magnum opus Personal Knowledge. Here we talk about a specific knowledge and thinking pattern which is difficult to convey to another person in writing or simple verbalizing. Our children know more than they can tell but they may not be able to articulate it in the conventional academic way and as a result of  time pressure.

Teachers and parents are often not aware of the knowledge their children possess or how it can be valuable, if nurtured wisely to the future children or our society. In light of this our teachers and our school system needs to adopt a revolutionary change.
The ultimate aim of education and educators should be grooming the future citizens of our nation by focusing on those with diverse thinking capabilities which should be construed as a gift and not as a failure.