COUNTRIES ARE BUILDING THEIR BRANDS AS THEY COMPETE NOT ONLY FOR POWER AND INFLUENCE, BUT IN THE NEW MARKETING BATTLES FOR EXPORTS, INWARD INVESTMENT AND TOURISM
For myself as a part of wolff olins , I have spent time working with companies like these in different markets leading their innovation and growth efforts.
Different people have different perspectives on innovation. Just like the story of blind men guessing which part of the body of an elephant they touch telling us it could be different things
Wolff Olins 10
OUR POINT OF VIEW
Local Admin
Our point of view just like the others is another point of view and we would like you to take back your own definition of innovation and what is imperative
If total up all the oil reserves in the GCC countries and total up the market value of all the stock markets in the world - the GCC countries together can buy out all the stock exchanges across the globe at the drop of a hat
But the truth is that across the world if we plot the levels of the essential ingredientsof innovation then just some very few cities and countries completely outweigh everyone else. The innovation world is truly spiky and NOT flat
When we tried to plot the offices of some of the largest venture firms who fund and feed innovations we found their offices to be in the exact same locations - a paradox
another challenge when we look at the pace of innovation and the impact of innovation - the pace of innovation has become exceedingly fast and the impact only greater. So the typicaly innovation cycles have shrunk from 60-80 years to 15-20 years
Some of this has led to a fierce fight for talent - image described here is that of Kuala Lumpur airport where a very small entrepreneur was received and whisked away to open a bank account and an office within 4 hours and by evening was back on his way.
Compare this to my own experience of having to go through multiple government agencies and processes and paying at 5 different places as official fees over a period of a month !
The only thing to come out a winner through all of this is to Make it Easy, Make it simple and make it free for the end consumer to open shop, move around freely and foster innovation and entrepreneurism.
And then there are some countries who come to us with more serious briefs around structurally addressing innovation. Almost always they have ended up having little action and very few timelines being met
In the meantime countries like Singapore repeatedly are fighting tooth and nail addressing structural and institutional pillars to help it keep the no one slot in the world to do business in
To develop and attract such talent places need to address the issues right at the start for example - help people take science not arts, study engineering and maybe not medicine , do electrical rather than petrochemical engineering ( in the gulf countries) , from there specialise in semiconductors and not telecoms , and then work at global foundries ( an abu dhabi company) and not run away to intel
Today 3-5% of revenues in the most innovative companies and of gdp in the innovative countries is spent on innovation. How much does your company or country spend on this ?
Through the downturn some countries are loosing their edge in innovation and this is an opportunity for countries, companies to take the lead and attempt some of the imperatives discussed
Some places have had great starts towards pursuing innovation, we have everything to play and win for through innovation , but almost everyone is losing ground to the top 10 countries/clusters
One cannot buy innovation only - the question is not whether to make or buy but to make it happen through policies and addressing it structurally as well
whenever you think of innovation think of who you want to attract - think the average 26 year old innovator the future of tomorrow - your success depends on making him successful.
