SHARJAH/Sharjah Government Media Bureau – Innovation without successful marketing remains invention. If you want to make your product successful, you must come up with an innovative strategy to sell it, said an expert while speaking about entrepreneurship at a seminar held as part of the third International Forum on Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program.
 
Dr. Saba Khalid, Assistant Professor, University of Sharjah, said that all companies try to innovate and produce something new. But many of them fail to take the products to people successfully. Unless they convey the people its benefits, the product will not see the light of the day.
 
During the hour-long interaction with aspiring entrepreneurs at the forum held on the sidelines of the UAE Innovation Month in Sharjah, she created a link between innovation and marketing.
 
“If you want to exploit the customers to benefit your company, you must need an innovative way to market the product. Don’t be innovative just in product creation. You must be innovative in pricing and promotion of the product as well as in creating a successful distribution channel,” she said.
 
Sharing a number of international success stories to stress on the marketing aspect of the business, she stressed that even MNCs like Apple and McDonald’s keep adding new marketing campaigns.
 
She was confident of today’s youth and termed them “quite intelligent who come up with extremely innovative ideas. They just need support and resources to make it to international arena.”
 
“They have surprised us. They make us proud every time they come up with solution for traffic problem, water scarcity, and waste management. They come up with solutions that even we can’t think of,” she said.
 
Dr Saba Khalid also pointed out that there is not much localized marketing strategy or advertising campaign. It gives the local youths a chance to explore the opportunity.
 
“We are not much into local adaptation as much as it should have been on the marketing side. We are still using much of the Westernized style of marketing, westernized images, westernized method of marketing. I definitely feel that we must adapt those international campaigns and evolve strategies that suit to our local needs and custom. We need to highlight more our culture in our marketing campaigns. That will not only sell our product but will also help us to market our destination,” she concluded.
 
The Sharjah Innovation Week is being celebrated from February 15-21 as part of the UAE Innovation Month at Al Majaz Waterfront and the Sharjah Centre for Astronomy and Space Sciences. Through the Innovation Month, Sharjah aims to transform innovation into an institutional culture that reflects its positive impact on society, establishes a working curriculum for all government and academic institutions in the Emirate, and encourages the private sector and community institutions to form a unified business system based on innovation as a basis for development.
 
-Ends-

© Press Release 2018