Central University Hosts Event for the Creation of the Collaborative Research and Innovation Center (CRCI)
Today, October 7, Central University hosted a major event dedicated to the creation of the Collaborative Research and Innovation Center (CRCI). This initiative marks an important step for higher education in Tunisia, with the ambition of anchoring scientific research at the heart of the country's economic and social needs.
During her intervention, Houbeb Ajmi, Director of Honoris in Tunisia, presented the center as "a bridge between knowledge and society," a space where researchers, students, and businesses will work together on projects with a dual scientific and industrial impact. She recalled that Central University, a member of the Honoris United Universities network, is today the largest private higher education institution in the country, with over 13,000 students and 500 collaborators spread across several regions, from Tunis to Gabès. This territorial network, according to her, constitutes "a major asset" for encouraging interdisciplinary research and collaborative innovation.
"A 21st-century university can no longer limit itself to teaching: it must be an actor of change," Ajmi affirmed, emphasizing the need to rethink the role of academic institutions in socio-economic development. She highlighted that the creation of the CRCI is part of the vision of the Global Innovation Index 2025 of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which calls for strengthening links between universities and businesses to stimulate national competitiveness. Tunisia, ranked 76th out of 139 economies, has gained several places compared to 2024, a progress she considers "encouraging," but which "calls for continuing the dynamic."
The center will focus on four strategic axes: digital transition and artificial intelligence, health and clinical research, ecological transition and social responsibility, as well as governance and human resource management. These areas reflect, according to Ajmi, the desire of Honoris to combine scientific rigor and concrete impact on society.
In the same spirit, Professor Armand Hatchuel, an eminent researcher at the École des Mines de Paris, was invited to give a lecture titled "The Science-Society Coupling: The Forgotten Key to Development." Before an audience composed of academics, students, and private sector representatives, he advocated for a reinvention of the link between scientific research and the socio-economic world.
According to this global specialist in the theory of design and innovation, research does not advance in opposition to the market, but thanks to its constant interaction with society. "The engine of progress is not isolation, but the coupling between science and society," he affirmed, questioning the historical separation between fundamental and applied research established in the 1930s.
Professor Hatchuel illustrated this idea through the example of the debate on vaccines during the Covid-19 crisis, which raised the essential question of scientific evidence. For him, the back-and-forth between research and the needs of the real world is the true lever of innovation. He recalled that in the 19th century, industry was a powerful engine of scientific progress, citing the case of Germany where collaborative laboratories enabled major discoveries, such as the discovery of bromine from the management of mining waste.
Hatchuel also mentioned the "Fayol turn" of 1870, when Henri Fayol, the father of administrative science, already advocated for a rapprochement between researchers and businesses. This model gave birth to a flourishing period of industrial research, from which several Nobel Prizes emerged. After World War II, this model gave way to the paradigm of "science for science," embodied by the Vannevar Bush report and large military projects. But, according to Hatchuel, the digital era and collaborative technologies now open the way to a new alliance between knowledge and action.
To demonstrate that a balance between research and business is possible, the professor cited the CIFRE (Conventions industrielles de formation par la recherche) model, launched in France in 1980. This device allows doctoral students to conduct their research within companies while remaining supervised by university laboratories. "The secret of its success is the double requirement: the project must be both relevant to the company and recognized as a genuine scientific question," he explained.
In conclusion, Armand Hatchuel invited Tunisian universities to inspire themselves from this logic of coupling, estimating that each country must build its own model of collaborative innovation. A reflection that resonates with the vision carried by Houbeb Ajmi and the Honoris network, for whom research is no longer conceived as an isolated academic exercise, but as a driving force for national and continental development.
