Dubai: The UAE is aiming innovation to contribute to 5 per cent of the GDP by 2021 from the government and private sector as it focuses on non-oil sectors, the Minister of Economy, Sultan Bin Saeed Al Mansouri, said on Monday at the Project Management Forum.
“We need to come up with a model that matches our needs and our requirements for 2021, and help us achieve in seven sectors of innovation,” Al Mansouri told delegates at the Dubai International Project Management Forum.
For Al Mansouri, innovation is a creative way of problem solving.
“As leaders in the organisation, one need to identify challenges in your own organisation,” he said, adding communication, coordination with various department is the best way to get innovation forward in an organisation.
Energy Minister Suhail Al Mazroui said innovators are few in numbers in an organisation, and ‘sentimental reward’ is the main driver of innovation rather than money.
Al Mazroui said organisations need to create the right environment, like for example Google, to foster innovation.
He said the UAE is the second largest manufacturer of semi-conductors in the world, just after Taiwan, adding some parts of the latest planes in the world have been manufactured in Abu Dhabi.
“The country would continue to surprise the world as long we have leadership that would drive us to innovation,” he added.
The country has announced plans of more than Dh300 billion to foster knowledge economy and innovation.
“Innovators needed to be helped to develop the products, and make them commercially viable,” Al Mansouri said.
“We lack in development process. This is where we need to focus on. We need to know where global expertise is, and where and how we can get it to the UAE,” he added.
Support:
Participants at a separate session unanimously agreed that projects management supports innovation, provided there is a change in the model.
However, innovation is associated with repeated trials and errors. Therefore the traditional model will not be sufficient for managing innovation projects, and a flexible method allowing for repeated trials has to be developed, the Roads Transport Authority (RTA) said.
“They also called for revamping the corporate management style through embedding the innovation culture by mapping out a clear strategy, and a comprehensive framework. Moreover, the human and physical resources have to be provided to foster a proper innovation management,” the RTA added.
Innovation would become a responsibility of each staff in any organisation, it added.
