A Long-Term Strategy for Dubai Building on Innovation And Clusters

Abstract

A long-term economic strategy for Dubai should build on policies aimed at enhancing the innovation environment. Dubai has created and attracted massive investments in both hard and soft infrastructure. The next step is to move from an investment-driven economy to an innovation-driven economy. Innovation is a broad concept involving the development of new products, processes, strategies, and organizational forms, and their coming into wide use. The degree of importance of an innovation is less related to the novelty of the technology as such but more related to how widespread its use is. The classical example is email, not technologically very sophisticated, but a new service that has changed the lives of most people in the developed world. Large innovations come with large economic consequences, and it is therefore important that Dubai starts to generate its own stream of innovations, to be commercialized in world markets both at home and abroad.