Wednesday 12 / March / 2025
Muscat: The 11th National Research Award (NRA), organised by the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, celebrated some of the brightest and innovative minds in the Sultanate of Oman.
Among the 13 winning NRA projects, “Challenges Facing Innovation Management in Omani Higher Education Institutions from the Point of View of Innovative Students” by principal investigator Marhouna Hamed Al Maqbali, a teacher at the Ministry of Education and a PhD student in Educational Administration at the Department of Foundations and Educational Administration, College of Education, Sultan Qaboos University (SQU), was awarded in the Education and Human Resources field in the Young Researcher’s category.
Discussing her research project, Marhouna stated that managing innovations effectively is one of the main challenges facing countries worldwide.
Hence, this study aimed to identify the major challenges confronting innovation management in higher education institutions in the Sultanate of Oman, as perceived by innovative students; before, during, and after the innovation process.
The study adopted a qualitative research approach using a phenomenological design to delve deeper into the challenges.
Marhouna and her research team conducted interviews with 30 students who had previously participated in competitions or received research funding from the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and
Innovation.
To ensure a comprehensive perspective, the study considered diversity in terms of years of participation and the stages achieved by the student teams or company.
As for the main findings of the study, results revealed several intertwined challenges facing innovation management, and issues emerging in one stage often extend to the subsequent stages highlighting the importance of planning from the outset.
Researcher Marhouna elaborated that the challenges of the first stage focused on innovative ideas exploration, team formation, and suitable supervisor selection.
The second stage’s challenges were an extension of the first phase and included personal challenges, policies and regulations, human and financial resources, logistics support, coordination among entities, incubator, knowledge and data access, and challenges related to decision-makers.
In the third stage, the challenges included a lack of follow-up after competitions, entities’ readiness limitation to adopt innovations, and human resources challenges as well as market and societal challenges.
Marhouna proposed several recommendations, including giving more attention to innovation management through pre-planning for the three stages and developing specific policies for innovative students to facilitate their work during the three phases.
The research project was published in the Educational Studies journal of the University of Jordan.
The research team consisted of Marhouna, Prof. Aisha Salim Al Harthi, Dr. Khalaf Marhoon Al Abri, and Prof. Said Suliman Al Dhafri.
Regarding her win, researcher Marhouna mentioned that “winning the National Research Award serves as a motivation to continue completing the whole research project and an incentive for conducting further research projects that contribute, even in a small way, to serving the country. Moreover, the success of this project highlights the voice of innovative students, whom I hope will receive greater attention from stakeholders, as they are the future and promising hope of the Sultanate of Oman.”
