(MENAFN - Khaleej Times) The UAE joins Australia and the US as one of the most attractive destinations globally for foreign talent and investment, the leading international business school revealed in its recent report.
The report 'Measuring Innovation Capabilities of Nations' gives valuable insights into the progress of the UAE in becoming a knowledge-based economy.
"Our new report adds a new member to the family of innovation and technology indices produced by Insead," Dr Sami Mahroum, Director of Innovation and Policy Initiatives at Insead Abu Dhabi, said in a statement on Thursday.
The Insead report was launched at the Global Competitiveness Summit entitled: Advancing Prosperity through Innovation. Hosted by the Emirates Competitiveness Council (ECC), the summit attended by senior policy makers, leaders of industry and academia, was the 3rd annual gathering of the Global Federation of Competitiveness Councils (GFCC) - a global network of leaders from Competitiveness Councils around the world.
The research added a valuable dimension to one of the network's goals to find better ways to measure innovation as a way to better understand and accelerate global competitiveness and prosperity. The report underlines the UAE government's commitment to support innovation. Indeed, Abu Dhabi and Dubai also showcased several innovations at the conference.
"As part of the strategic Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030 to ensure a sustainable knowledge-based economy, innovation plays a fundamental role. The government is building solid foundations to promote a business-enabling environment that fosters innovation and to strengthen our research and development capacity to enable an economy based on human talent that generates higher value added growth and prosperity of the people," said Mohammed Omar Abdullah, Undersecretary, Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development.
The report findings highlighted the UAE's particular strength in its capability and performance to anchor knowledge it has attracted firmly in its economy, not least thanks to its relatively investment-friendly environment and ease of doing business.
Although industrialised economies, such as Australia, South Korea and the US lead in terms of diffusing knowledge within its economies, the UAE along with Saudi Arabia, lead among the resource-rich countries in this regard. The UAE is especially apt at spreading innovative skills and techniques among its rapidly developing human capital.
In terms of accessing the knowledge, the UAE displayed a significant ability to do so due to its cosmopolitan nature, in regard of both, talent pool and presence of international enterprises, as well as adopting advanced information and communication technologies. The UAE joins the rank of leaders, alongside Australia, South Korea and the US among the GFCC countries.
In comparison to South Korea, although both, the UAE and Australia, have a high capacity to attract knowledge, the Insead research exposed that in the case of the latter two countries, performance remains more modest due the high share of natural resource commodities on their international trade books.
Insead's research also showed that the other capability indicator the UAE could strengthen would be the creation of knowledge within the country and on commercially exploiting innovations further. In respect of creating and exploiting new knowledge the US still emerges as a clear leader. Australia and South Korea aren't far behind in knowledge creation as such but together with the UAE catching up on exploiting innovation commercially.
