MANAMA: Developing innovations as an essential platform for social and economic development came in spotlight at a major round-table discussion held in Bahrain.
Ebtikar Association organised a round-table discussion on “The National Strategy for Innovation” under the patronage of Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) chairman Dr Essam Fakhro, in collaboration with the Economic Development Board, BCCI’s SMEs Support Centre and Boston Analytics.
More than 45 senior officials took part in the event, representing over 40 government, semi-government and private bodies in education, finance investment, industry, technology and support services sectors in addition to a number of Bahraini innovators and entrepreneurs.
The sessions were managed by experts from Boston Analytics, who delivered a presentation about Bahrain’s economy, reality of innovation and the opportunities and challenges of research and development in the region in addition to its impact on social and economic development.
Participants discussed topics related to promoting innovation in the medium term and long term, existing and necessary initiatives to encourage research and development of innovations to support the knowledge-based economy in Bahrain.
They shared their views to reach an agreement to draft a national strategy for innovation and submit it to the government.
The participants emphasised that Bahrain needs to develop and implement a national strategy for innovation and link it to various economic sectors. Also, they stressed the need to develop effective tools to promote the spirit and culture of creativity and innovation in the kingdom.
“Developing innovations is not a luxury, but it is an urgent component to strengthen the sustainable development in human societies. Innovation is an essential platform for social and economic development. It has become an essential element to raise competitiveness and create decent job opportunities. It is considered to be the main component for successful entrepreneurship in a competitive market full of challenges,” said association founder and chairman Osama Al Khaja.
“Promoting innovation can help entrepreneurs to achieve sustainable economic development of their institutions and their businesses. At the moment, innovation is a priority for business leader, and decision makers involved in the development of their countries and the welfare of their communities. It is the main characteristics that differentiate between leaders and followers in the world. Bahrain enjoys many necessary components of the ecosystem to promote innovation but we need to unify efforts to fully activate them,” he added.
“Bahrain has immense talent backed by a lot of agencies to support innovation. The need of the hour is to create a national innovation strategy to harness the resources to drive innovation, which would bring Bahrain on the world innovation map” said Boston Analytics managing director CFO Devesh Bahl.
“We chose Bahrain a year ago as our first knowledge centre in the Middle East. The decision was simple – availability of talent and the environment which we could leverage across GCC and Middle East for our operations. Bahrain has the potential to become the knowledge hub of innovation for the region,” said Boston Analytics managing director and COO Rajeev Vaid.