C. Engdahl reporting from FEI2010
Engaging Academia As Critical Partners In Creating Intellectual Property
FEI2010 Presenter: Najib Abusalbi, Schlumberger
Najib Abusalbi is currently the Director of University Collaboration for Schlumberger Information Solutions, a business division of Schlumberger, the world's largest oilfield services provider. During his presentation as part of the Beyond 'Open' Summit during FEI2010, Mr. Abusalbi outlined the philosophical and strategic approach taken by Schlumberger to address the current and future challenges in the energy sector.
Some of the key drivers in the energy sector are familiar and fairly straightforward ' supply, demand, security, etc. What I found interesting early on in the presentation was Mr. Abusalbi's acknowledgement of the enormity of the challenge and more importantly the acknowledgement that 'no single company or organization can tackle the problem alone.' For this reason, Schlumberger has taken an Open Innovation stance and looks to partner with academia and other traditional for-profit organizations to create 'a future with zero carbon fuels.' They're approach has been to create an eco-system based on an open technology platform through which organizations can contribute, share, and engage one another to develop ideas and solutions. The platform is only 18 months in the making. But coupled with an ongoing aggressive strategy to engage more and more partners, Schlumberger hopes to take its initial success in developing intellectual capital, intellectual property, and thought leadership to the next level.