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Establishing an Innovation Culture a Popular Topic at Abu Dhabi Innovation Forum 2012

Event offers dialogue, solutions for organizations struggling with innovation culture and strategy deployment

The third annual Abu Dhabi Innovation Forum on 23-25 January drew more than 150 innovation experts, business people, educators and regional government representatives. The 3-day forum, focused on "Developing strategies to unleash the true value of innovation in business," featured 20 speakers who offered real-world experience and shared best practices for innovation, including local representatives from Google, Proctor & Gamble and 3M.

Mr. Mohammed Alansari of Saudi Aramco shared the company's step-by-step approach to increasing intellectual capital, which results in improved contributions and results for its corporate innovation program.

Mr. Wim Roels of Borouge explained the company's focus on "value creation through innovation" and shared several examples of how the company achieves this goal, including innovative plastic solutions for automobiles and shopping carts that reduce environmental impact.

Mr. Kamal Hassan, president and CEO of Innovation 360, a local innovation consultancy and a Gold Sponsor for the event, spoke to a full audience on the topics of innovation and idea management and creating a culture that enables innovation. He also presented a 5-step innovation deployment system that organizations can use to develop an innovation strategy that creates new value for customers.

During the presentation, Mr. Hassan polled the audience on a number of questions using real-time text-based polling system Textello. The polls revealed that:

• Sixty-two percent (62%) of respondents don't have or are not aware of a structured innovation initiative in their organizations.

• Only 37% felt that their organizations' senior management would listen to or explore a game-changing or radical idea with a high degree of risk

• While 15% identified their organization's innovation culture as "Inspiring Leadership/Leading from Behind," 45% could not identify their organization's innovation culture or felt there was no innovation culture.

The presentations from Mr. Hassan and others at the forum brought to light many similar challenges faced by regional organizations. "Most of the participants I met talked about the challenges of supporting innovation in their organizations, both from a culture and infrastructure perspective," Hassan said. "It's a difficult undertaking for any organization, but especially those who take a traditional approach to business and management, as many do in Abu Dhabi."

"You don't have to throw out all tradition to succeed at innovation," he continued, "The key is to implement systems and leverage tools that enable the organization's people to be more creative, and the organization to develop a strategy for innovation that is based on its strengths."

To further the dialogue around regional innovation challenges, Innovation 360 will facilitate the "First Annual Bootcamp on Building Innovation Intrapreneurship and Enabling a Knowledge Economy" on 8 March in Dubai. The event will provide an opportunity to co-create solutions to some of the common innovation challenges in organizations around the Middle East. It is free for organizational leaders, executives and managers who attended the 2012 Abu Dhabi Innovation Forum. About Innovation 360

Innovation 360 is a global innovation management consultancy that helps companies of all sizes and government organizations bridge the gap between innovation strategy and execution. The firm's comprehensive offerings, including business model innovation, strategic innovation deployment, innovation management and execution, and innovation leadership development, encourage new value creation and enable organizational transformation and growth. Visit http://i360institute.com.

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Media Contact: Sana Saleem, sana.saleem@i360institute.com, +971 4 319 7645

© Press Release 2012