Innoway recently had the privilege of attending the Innovation Live! event in Dubai. The event, which brought together 350 of the UAE’s most innovative thinkers, included a conference, hackathon, and exhibition space.
With the conference limited to 250 attendees, it was a great opportunity to expose ourselves to some amazing thinkers in a relatively intimate setting.
Rather than keeping all the lessons we learned at the event to ourselves, we thought we’d share some of the biggest ones with you.
The UAE is taking innovation seriously
The Prime Minister’s office is very clearly set on taking an experimental approach to innovation. That makes us happy, because it’s the same approach we believe in.
Even though this innovation approach hasn’t been fully implemented, the government has appointed chief innovation officers and established accelerators, which is an incredibly important start.
Fully realising this new approach, however, needs a big change in mindset from organisations. Most organisations work on excellence, and excellence is related to perfection.
The experimentation method encourages people to try new ideas in an early stage before big investments are made, and then progressively scale them. Excellence encourages everyone to build perfection BEFORE launching, leading to lose of time and investments.
They’re putting money into it too
Innovation isn’t just about government policy either. There is a government fund for innovation called the Mohamed Bin Rashid innovation Fund. The fund is backed to the tune of 2 Billion AED fund and aims to fund innovative projects that can probe market validation. You can find out more about the fund here ()
The UAE innovation ecosystem is maturing
The above two points are signs that the UAE innovation ecosystem is maturing. While this is a good sign, it does mean there are a lot of things happening at the same time. All this noise means there are plenty of overlaps, creating inefficiencies.
At this stage, it’s unclear who is doing what and who should take the lead when it comes to specific project. Some adjustments are needed to make things more efficient and to yield better results. This will come in time, provided people keep moving in the right direction.
The 4th Industrial Revolution is here
The next big business and societal revolution will be driven by technology. There’s no getting around that. You only have to look at who today’s biggest companies are to see that.
The private sector needs to step up
We were fortunate enough to attend Innovation Live! in 2016, as well as this year’s event. One thing that was noticeable this year is that the speaking panels were had a heavy public-sector focus.
That actually makes sense, since the innovation agenda is currently been driven by government.
Private companies, on the other hand, seem to have fallen a bit behind. If they want a seat at the table, they’re going to have to do some serious catching up.
