Doha: With mounting global challenges and rapidly evolving technologies there are several models that countries need to adopt, develop, and foster for dynamic innovation ecosystems that can serve local and global communities.
As we continue our journey in Qatar and other countries work towards developing innovation-based ecosystem and economy, we must continue investments and support of our national ecosystems across all these sectors that is universities, research institutes, private sectors and public institutions, said an official during a virtual event.
The Qatar Research, Development and Innovation (QRDI) Council organised a webinar entitled ‘Fostering Innovation Ecosystems: A Global Perspective - Strengthening the Innovation Ecosystem from a Global Perspective’ yesterday. The event saw participation of several senior experts and innovation ecosystem leaders from Singapore, Switzerland, Sweden and the United Kingdom who discussed about the best practices, successful country models in the field of innovation and the critical roles that government, universities and the private sector can play.
Eng. Omar Ali Al Ansari, QRDI Council Secretary General, said “Qatar has been thriving towards knowledge-based economy as articulated in our Qatar National Vision 2030, an economy that is characterised by innovation. As a council we have developed and are implementing a national strategy for innovation and scientific research. One of the core elements of our strategy is to further develop our innovation ecosystem, boosting innovation capabilities across the borders, increasing business R&D (Research and Development) activities, strengthening scientific research, and developing economic competitiveness over the long run and continuing to address some of the global challenges we face.”
“Singapore, Switzerland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom have become global leaders in innovation and scientific research, and they are in the top 10 rankings of the World Innovation Index. As we continue on our journey in Qatar and other countries as well look to either develop or advance their innovation ecosystems, we are excited to learn from each other’s experiences and share our knowledge with each other in this platform,” he added.
Alicia Greated, CEO KTN, UK said, “At KTN we are making diverse connections with the purpose of driving innovation, and we are connecting businesses to new partners, academic, funders, investors, policy makers and we are also creating wider innovation communities. We work across a very diverse innovation ecosystem both nationally and globally.”
“Moving from being competitive to be collaborative and keeping that mindset is in the forefront of everything because the connectivity between us whether it is across sectors, disciplines, countries, types of organisations, ecosystems is vital. The key step for all of us is to work together to face challenges and be open and collaborate together," she added.
Andre Kudelski, President, Chairman and CEO Innosuisse, Kudelski Group Switzerland said, “Innovation has no boundaries and as Innosuisse we are giving access to private companies to academic research. One of the next steps that we are considering is to give the opportunity for existing talent within academia and SMEs to have the opportunity to experience outside of Switzerland.”
For his part Fredrik Horstedt, Director for International Collaboration, Vinnova, Sweden said, “The main driver of the innovation currently is transition towards sustainable society and there are a lot of important incidents that need to happen like climate neutrality, transition to green energy and need to significantly increase the resource productivity of industrial value chains.”
He added, “To work challenge driven, across societal sectors and being multi-disciplinary should be strength of innovation ecosystem in any country.”
Low Teck Seng, CEO National Research Foundation, Singapore said, “We have invested seriously in science and technology from 1991 because we have a belief that this will be a key pillar in the development of Singapore. In the last 30 years we have built a very sound and viable innovation ecosystem that allows us to move on and support innovation processes to support enterprises.”
He noted, the strategies we have taken to turn ourselves into an innovation knowledge economy is with a slightly different approach and we have been progressing very well because of Foreign Direct Investments but we have ambitions also to build our own industrial sector.
He also shared about the future of Singapore’s innovation economy and the challenges to overcome.
QRDI was established in 2018, representing a new milestone in Qatar’s research, development and innovation (RDI) agenda.
