WASHINGTON – The Emirates News Agency a year ago announced a partnership between the UAE Ministry of Economy and General Electric, the giant US technology multinational. They just signed a Memorandum of Understanding whose objective is “to strengthen the culture of localised innovation, and inspire UAE government employees with deep insights on the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem”.
GE will show how to do innovation
The Emirates News Agency explained that “GE will organise leadership speaker sessions to be led by experts at the GE Ecomagination Innovation Center in Masdar City, a regional hub that promotes collaborative research and innovation, for 30 government employees nominated by the Ministry of Economy. The Speaker Series will specifically address the areas of FastWorks, GE’s new initiative to promote the ‘start-up’ culture, which emphasises the disciplines of lean manufacturing and agile software development.”
There was also an announcement about “discussions on entrepreneurship and innovation, the role of education in innovation, and the Industrial Internet, GE’s path-breaking approach to digital industrialisation through the power of big data and advanced analytics. All workshops are designed to promote the integration of innovative thinking into our everyday lives to achieve significant leaps in productivity and efficiency.”
And there was more. A variety of workshops on this and that, demonstrations of how 3D printing works, and so forth.
The UAE government promotes innovation
This agreement with GE supposedly demonstrated how deeply the UAE government is committed to the promotion of innovation in the UAE. As a high level official put it: “The MoU with GE is a strong testament to the commitment of the Ministry, and indeed the UAE Government, to promote a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship nation-wide. With a focus on sharing best practices, the MoU will help provide deep insights into the newest trends in innovative thought processes, manufacturing, and technologies among the government staff through high-caliber workshops.”
And the article reported many other lengthy quotes from other high level UAE officials. It is all about “bringing new insights”, “creating a culture of sharing”, enhancing “co-creation”.
Mostly nonsense
Looks promising, doesn’t it? Well, no. In fact, most of this is just nonsense.
Here is the thing. The UAE may have the money and the resources to convince GE, and may be other tech companies, to engage in these kinds of exercises. But they are generally futile.
And here is why.
You can import innovative technologies. But you cannot import a culture that breeds innovation.
No, “an innovation culture” cannot be imported, prescribed, or mandated. Innovation happens because a self-renewing, innovation friendly eco-system has been created, quite often by accident, may be around a research university, or another prominent R&D facility or laboratory.
Generally this happens in dynamic, open economies that encourage entrepreneurship, with a history of applied science and technology and successful commercial applications of new developments.
And this is certainly not the profile of the UAE, not even close.
The building blocks
We know what the essential building blocks for an innovation-driven economy are; at least the big ones that make innovation possible.
For starters, you need a dynamic, free market economy. Then you absolutely need laws and a judicial system that protect private property and intellectual property. Then you need human capital that can be successfully mobilized. And this means that you need some very good science and engineering schools. And top-notch business schools. This type of high quality education system will create a chance that at least some of the graduates will develop a passion for working on new ventures.
Keep in mind that most of these budding would be entrepreneurs will try and fail. In some cases multiple times. But some of them will come up with something. Those who do will need additional support to bring their idea or prototype to the next level.
Hence the critical importance of networks created by top-notch academic institutions, research labs, and other R& D outfits. And, of course, you need developed capital markets, and a robust venture capital industry capable of spotting new comers and willing to risk real money on what look like good prospects that could very well turn out to be duds. And finally you need real and well-regulated stock markets where a successful new venture that plans to go public can receive new funding from willing investors.
Just the minimum
Please note. This is just the beginning. These are just minimum prerequisites. You may have all this and still no consequential innovation is produced. And why so? Because “creating innovation” is still more art than science. Many would-be innovators fail. Some give up. Some don’t. Sometimes they pursue something, and then stumble into something else. Not infrequently, there are strange, totally unexpected discoveries.
What about GE in the UAE?
Anyway, what has this to do with GE trying to foster a culture of innovation in the UAE? Plenty. The UAE may be trying to promote good things. But the notion that a Ministry can energize the creative juices of the people by signing an MoU with a large US multinational is mostly a dream, unless it is a mere public relations exercise.
Do the Emirates have an innovation friendly environment?
Sure enough, if indeed the UAE were a modern, market-driven free economy with lots of talented entrepreneurs already working on next generation stuff, then some practical advice delivered through workshops by real pros could make a real difference. But this assumes the existence of a solid foundation that we are not sure is really there.
You cannot copy successful models
Here is the basic point. You simply cannot make things happen if the fundamentals are not already well established. For instance, the whole world knows about Silicon Valley in the U.S. And yet nobody has been able to replicate it. And this is because in Silicon Valley there is a unique culture, peculiar sets of non linear connections and relationships, and cross-pollination that sometimes may take place in counter intuitive ways. There is no formula for this.
There is nothing wrong in the desire to promote innovation. But the best that governments can do is to make sure that they can and will establish the essential preconditions, the “enabling environment” which may lead to the create a business friendly eco-system.
First of all, you must have genuine freedom
And the most essential of all preconditions is genuine, unfettered freedom. Yes personal freedom. What’s that got to do with science and technology? Plenty. If it did not, then the old Soviet Union , a country that gave eminent scientists a privileged status within its society, should have been a remarkably successful innovation factory. But this did not happen. And this is because those scientists were all state employees working on (mostly national security) assignments. They did not own their inventions. They could not market them. They could not start private companies. The state owned everything.
Free people have a chance to explore and discover
In Western countries it is different. When educated people with advanced knowledge about science, technology and organizations feel genuinely free, then they are also free to think and experiment, sometimes in new and unorthodox ways. this environment is the precursor to innovation, sometimes very successful innovation.
Make money
Because they are free to think out of the box, some entrepreneurs may very well find or make something really new and become innovators. And part of the incentive is that the would-be innovators know that they will own their ideas, and that the system will allow them to market them without creating artificial obstacles.
Yes, they will be able to make money through the products of their intellect. All this happens because free people who are free to be innovators want to try to be innovators (at least some of them) and hopefully gain from their successes.
They did not get this urge and passion to try new things because they attended a state-sponsored workshop in an oil rich country that at best has a culture of trade, but certainly not of industry.