Manama: Innovation is vital for Arabs and Muslims keen on an active role in human progress, Qatar's Emir has said.
"For us innovation is not only part of our values and culture, it is a vital necessity that is indispensable if we as Arabs or Muslims want to assume a place in designing and structuring a prosperous and developed human reality as we envisage," Shaikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani said.
'Science is power'
"Science is in itself power, as Francis Bacon said , and because we live in an era which acknowledges that nothing stands as an obstacle against human progress, it is pivotal that innovation should always be one of our strategic goals," he said at the opening session of Turkey's Conference on Innovation in Istanbul on Wednesday.
People cannot have access to fields of the new knowledge revolution as active participants if innovation is not their goal and means.
"We live in a world whose main characteristic is based on free markets and economic, commercial, financial and services spheres, a world where competitiveness has become its first symbol. This competitiveness is based primarily as is well known to everyone on inspiring and stimulating the human more and more to be innovative. This is precisely the crux of the matter that we want to ponder," he said.
According to the Emir, competitiveness has led to the emergence of the knowledge industry that is based primarily on the mastery of transcontinental scientific and technological research.
"Hence, it has become clear that he who has knowledge has the ability to influence people because he is controlling the industry of change more than that who has the power of money and wealth. Knowledge has become the true power and we have to look at the map of the power of human influence in our contemporary world in order to verify this fact. The categorisation of scientific and research institutions has become one of the indicators that reveal the progress of any society," Shaikh Hamad said.
Qatar has earmarked 2.8 per cent of its GDP for innovation and scientific research and allocated $350 million for relevant innovative ventures in Qatar and abroad, he said.
