Press conference on world summit on innovation and entrepreneurship

In an effort to jumpstart innovation and entrepreneurship worldwide, the Sultanate of Oman would host a landmark gathering in early April bringing together world leaders in the business, science, education, policy and research sectors, correspondents were told this afternoon at a Headquarters press conference.

The World Summit on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, to be held from 1 to 3 April in Muscat, will focus on strengthening innovation, entrepreneurship and scientific research, as well as promoting growth and investment in the region and in emerging markets in Asia, the Americas and Africa.

Oman, representing one of the world’s most promising emerging markets, was proud to serve as the host nation for the Summit, its Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Fuad Al-Hinai, told the press.  His country, together with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), was providing a forum for leaders from the highest levels of Government and business, along with educators and non-governmental organizations, to come together to share ideas and forge new partnerships and innovation clusters for the maximum benefit of all emerging populations.

Joining Mr. Al-Hinai were Sam Hamdan, Chairman, Global Leadership Team; Stephen DuMont, Vice-President, Global Public Sector Internet Business Solutions Group, Cisco Systems, Inc.; Robert K. Lifton, Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Medis Technologies, Ltd.; and Casper Sonesson, Acting Director, Division of Business Partnerships, UNDP.

Mr. Hamdan, whose Global Leadership Team served as event coordinator for the Summit, said the primary mission of the gathering was to explore ways to make entrepreneurship and innovation work for emerging populations.  About 85 business leaders were set to participate in discussions focusing on six main pillars:  building solid entrepreneurship infrastructure in emerging markets; knowledge and education; sustainability; wireless innovation; growth ventures; and social innovation, including empowerment of women and youth.  It would be the first world summit to try to address the gaps identified by the UNDP Arab Human Development Report in terms of freedom, knowledge, education and women’s participation.

One of the 85 business leaders to participate in the Summit was Mr. DuMont, who stated that today, competitive advantage was no longer based on being the lowest cost producer or on having the highest productivity in terms of turnover per person.  Today’s economic and competitive advantage stemmed from being able to achieve higher levels of innovation productivity.

One of Cisco’s goals, he said, was to help its customers and potential customers to become more effective in the utilization of technology.  Cisco had realized several years ago that for it to be successful in providing technology to the world, it needed to help the world to understand technology.  For that reason, the company had formed, with a number of partners, what it referred to as “Cisco networking academies”.  Those academies were located in several lesser developed countries, which were facing the challenge of trying to employ effectively the newest technologies, but not having the human resources developed to be capable of coping with those technologies.

Currently, he continued, there were 10,000 such academies worldwide, six of them in Oman.  The academies enabled Cisco to provide educational opportunities for underprivileged youth around the globe.  Also, in an effort to empower women, there were a number of academies focused on providing women the opportunity to become networking engineers.  He was anxious to encourage a further utilization of that particular programme to allow people to cope with technology.

By virtue of the way the academies approached education, using a platform of e-learning, he was discovering that that same type of education could be used for other subjects other than network engineering.  A few years ago, Cisco had become involved in the Jordan Education Initiative, thereby reconstituting the education process from kindergarten through the end of high school.  Using a technology platform, it was interconnecting all the schools in Jordan with broadband technology and, among other things, providing all students -- starting in kindergarten -- with access to laptops.

“What we’ll find is that here, in a lesser developed country with an average per capita income of $1,700 per year, they will have an educational facility which exceeds that which is available in most of the developing countries”, he said.  That project was in the process of being migrated to Egypt.

The UNDP, said Mr. Sonesson, was increasingly looking at the role of entrepreneurship, and the private sector in the general, as a key contributor to overall development and to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.  One of the key instigators for that renewed focus on the role of the private sector came from the United Nations Commission on the Private Sector and Development, launched in 2004.

One of the main messages of the Commission, he said, was that a strong expansion in private sector investment was the main driver of development, as it provided more than 90 per cent of all new jobs; was the main driver behind economic growth; and was the main generator of tax revenues, which the Government could then, in turn, spend on public health and education.  There was no doubt that the private sector was the main engine for development, and that development aid alone would never be able to achieve the Millennium Goals.  It was crucial to engage the private sector and promote entrepreneurship and innovation.

In supporting entrepreneurship, the UNDP sought to take action in different areas, including establishing appropriate laws to stimulate entrepreneurship and innovation.  One example that the UNDP had been part of developing was the Viet Nam Enterprise Law, which illustrated the impact that reform in that area could have.  Established in 2000, the Law eliminated several hundred regulations for the creation of small businesses.  Since its promulgation, some 150,000 new enterprises had been registered in the country, with a total capital value of some $14 billion, which indicated the kind of capital that could be unleashed by establishing the right kind of policy framework.

Highlighting the innovative solutions coming from small businesses and entrepreneurs, Mr. Lifton said that Medis Technologies, with less than 100 employees, was the only company in the world to develop a commercially viable, non-hazardous, inexpensive, small fuel cell for powering portable devices.  That was a new invention in the fuel cell field, and would be used throughout the world, particularly in emerging nations where land line phones were being bypassed for cell phones.

He suggested that emerging nations would be well served to develop an infrastructure of capital availability for innovative small business programmes, including encouraging and rewarding venture capital, developing capital markets, and having programmes to allow entrepreneurs and innovators to have access to production and marketing know-how.

Small businesses, he added, were a major creator of jobs, which was essential to the future of emerging nations, where the population of young people was growing far faster than available jobs and broad-based unemployment could lead to serious political dislocations.  His message in Oman would be that with all the well-deserved attention given to leading companies, it was important not to ignore the potential of innovation and entrepreneurship from small companies and individuals.

Asked if the Summit would take a stand against the creation of “geographic barriers” in terms of access to information, such as that set up by the Chinese Government “with the collusion of Microsoft and Google”, Mr. Hamdan said that the flow of information would be a major issue at the Summit, which would take a position that did not advocate exclusion.  The flow of information among nations and the development of innovation clusters would be a major part of the discussions.  Collaborative commerce would ultimately improve the quality of life for many emerging nations.

Mr. DuMont said that the issue was one that ran counter to many of the global organizations that would like to be able to allow people anywhere on the globe to participate as members of their innovation teams.  His organization would not encourage that kind of restraint of information flow.

Responding to a question on the major obstacles encountered by the Arab world in going “hi-tech”, Mr. Al-Hinai noted that half of Oman’s population was very young.  Every year, Oman produced 6,000 to 10,000 new high school graduates into the job market.  The Government was trying to find jobs for them, as well as encouraging private training institutes to provide training to young people who had no prospects of going to university.  Hopefully, he added, when Oman no longer had oil to produce, there would be other areas where people could earn a living.

Mr. DuMont added that the Cisco academies were particularly effective in providing education that was in demand in the marketplace.  As for what worked in the Middle East, he found that the same approach used in more developed countries of partnering was working very effectively.  A classic example was some of the pioneering efforts that had taken place in Dubai, whose leader had identified the fact that it was possible to calculate the number of years “before the oil stops flowing”, and so it was necessary to develop an economy that was sustainable after that occurred.

As for why Oman was chosen to host the Summit, Mr. Hamdan attributed the decision to a combination of vision and the governance element, noting that governance was a key discussion element at the Summit.  Oman was one of the top Governments in the world when it came to transparency.  Also, the Government had specific programmes to, among other things, facilitate the funding of new initiatives.  Muscat, he noted, was conducive to executives coming in, “without being bothered by the hype” of a busy city.

More information on the Summit could be found at www.wsie.org.

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For information media • not an official record