Dubai: A report released on Tuesday by The Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry ranked London as emerged the most innovative city, followed by Hong Kong and Singapore respectively.
The Dubai Innovation Index Report ranked Dubai 16th amount 28 cities, ahead of cities such as Madrid, Milan, Sao Paulo, Mumbai, Shanghai and Beijing. According to a statement released by the Chamber, the report, which was launched in collaboration with PwC in 2015, was commissioned to support UAE’s vision for innovation and to promote Dubai’s quest towards being the smartest city in the world by 2021.
The Index compared Dubai with 28 global cities on macroeconomic measures of innovation and to analyse innovation performance of Dubai’s private sector, including at the firm level. Through the Index, the Chamber wants to create awareness and increase the participation of the private sector in the total innovation efforts of the city of Dubai, and provide a benchmark to measure innovation.
“That is why we decided to launch the Index and have been very open and transparent about the parameters we have used to set a benchmark for measuring innovation. We hope the results of the survey will act as a catalyst for simulating innovation in the private sector in Dubai and promote their participation in the process of innovation.”
The aim of the Index is to identify what is Dubai’s position in the global innovation scenario, what are the challenges and opportunities faced by the private sector when it comes to innovation and what can businesses and government do to promote innovation. According to the Report, Dubai has scored well in several “enablers” categories, namely “Government support” and “building the culture of innovation”, and scored average on “funding” and “political, economic and social environment” elements. However, lower scores for “infrastructure for innovation” and “skills and talent” suggest these areas require improvement.
The Index, which measures innovation within the 61 indicators, shows Dubai’s superiority in the field of output and performance, particularly in the launch of new products and services and outputs of technology. However, intellectual property and opportunities for collaboration with institutions and economies for scientific work need some more attention.
Survey results of Dubai’s private sector indicate that “implementation of ideas” and “retention of talent” are key challenges to build innovation capabilities and lead to a low score for “intellectual capital”.
The health care industry leads innovation for private sector industries, with an innovation score of 60.25, followed closely by media and marketing (60.06) and information and communication technology (59.29). Manufacturing, education, training and research and transport and logistics have scored average on the innovation index relative to the other industries, whereas construction and real estate, financial, insurance and legal services and agriculture, fishing and forestry score among the low-performing industries in innovation.
