DUBAI – The UAE has set its sights on becoming a global leader in innovation and in capitalizing on the unfolding fourth industrial revolution, delegates of the Co-Create Agenda of Innovation Live! at The Meydan Hotel in Dubai were told.

Addressing the conference, Huda Al Hashimi, Assistant Director General of Strategy and Innovation, Prime Minister’s Office, spoke on the UAE’s innovation vision and strategy, as well as collaboration with the private sector.

According to Al Hashimi, the government accelerators program celebrated its first year recently, and the results have so far been promising. Some of the achievements include a seven-fold increase in patents filed at the Ministry of Education – 27 within a 60-day period or 135% better compared to last year.

The Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation has recorded a 106% employment of Emirati nationals in the private financial sector, while the Ministry of Economy has achieved a 100% improvement, successfully passing a by-law for venture capital activities in the UAE within a 50-day period.

“To become a global innovation leader, we need to improve efficiency, which is what we are doing with the government accelerators program; as well as to engage the private sector in innovative collaborative partnerships,” Al Hashimi added, who also emphasized that the path towards innovation could be challenging, so “we need to admit the short-term failures in order not to have the big failures down the road.”

Innovation Live!, a collaborative initiative to connect the government and the private sector, has been tapped to create an interconnected innovation ecosystem in the UAE to help drive the country’s future economic growth.

Organized by MEED, the region’s leading business intelligence provider, in partnership with the Prime Minister’s Office, Innovation Live! was launched last year and has since become a thriving network of more than 700 innovators from government and the private sector working together to co-create and deliver outcome-driven innovations to support the UAE’s Vision 2021.

Innovation Live! has now provided 11 recommendations from its think tank sessions that are now being reviewed by the Prime Minister’s Office as to how they can be utilized to achieve the UAE’s Vision 21.

Among the recommendations that have been put forward include focus on the UAE becoming a leader in manufacturing as well as research and development of advanced technology in areas of global interest like Artificial Intelligence, semiconductors, nanotechnology and 3D printing. There are also plans to boost innovation in the SME sector with various funding and support mechanisms. — SG