How Dubai is emerging as the Hub of the Future

Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DCCI) has broadcast a sponsored programme on Discovery ME detailing the city’s efforts to become a Hub of The Future.

The programme details Dubai’s journey from a trading port to a global hub for commerce, trade and transport.

It also highlights efforts to embrace new technologies and ways of thinking, from projects including the dredging of the Dubai Creek and launching Emirates Airline in recent decades to current goals of becoming a smart city.

Read: Predictions 2018: Dubai Chamber president and CEO Hamad Buamim

“Innovation is necessity in Dubai,” said Dubai Chamber president and CEO Hamad Buamim. “Thinking outside the box is one way to survive, you have to be relevant and you have always to come up with a new way of doing things.

As part of these efforts, the official said the chamber cannot just copy its global counterparts but has to come up with “new ways of doing things”.

These include the organisation’s work on a city innovation index that is now in its third edition. The most recent version in February ranked Dubai as the 14th most innovative city globally.

Read: Dubai climbs to 14th on city innovation index

In undertaking the project, the chamber found that the private sector in Dubai was not spending enough on research and development.

“To be able to do that they need to realise this is important to survive,” Buamim said. “You cannot communicate in old ways, you need to use all these new ways of doing things.”

He went on to encourage firms to invest in IT, people and systems to enable innovation and enlist the chamber’s support in doing so as it establishes a growing network of branch offices abroad.