Top ten blog posts in 2013 (6-10)

As I mentioned in my "Lessons” of blogging post in May (you can read here, readers seem to like lists. As the final days of 2013 countdown I thought it might be interesting – for me as much as for you – to countdown the top ten blog posts of the year as rated by number of views. (I know this places a bias on posts published at the beginning of the year, but hey, the world of lists is full of biases!)

Number 10:

There are three article snapshot posts that made it in the top 10. Coming in at number 10 with 136 views is the post Article Snapshot: Business Opportunities in the UAE. The post provided an excerpt of an article I wrote for a newly launched online magazine in Canada – Canadian Business Strategist Magazine. It outlined the many untapped opportunities available to Canadian companies (or really any company) in health care, adventure and eco-tourism, metals, convenience stores, fashion and food and beverage.

Number 9:

The ninth most read blog post at 145 views was Male Youth Entrepreneurship in the UAE: a Research Project. The project was to study the motivators and deterrents of young men to become entrepreneurs and also looked at the lessons learned from two Emirati entrepreneurs interviewed by Yousef Al Shehhi. Yousef (now graduated) did a great job and he presented his findings at the MIT-Masdar Institute Forum on Entrepreneurship and Innovation  to great interest by researchers and the general public. 

Yousef and his poster 

Number 8:

Looking back at the numbers I was kind of surprised at number 8... The post Joining the Conversation: How to get our voices heard from the Middle East (2/2), with 149 views, is all about research and becoming a bigger part of the global management research community. As we approach the deadline for 2014 Academy of Management submissions I hope there will be more submissions from the Middle East in 2014 than 2013... I know many in the group photo below are working towards that goal!

Caucus participants AOM 2013

Number 7:

The second article snapshot is an article wrote in collaboration with researchers in Tunisia and Yemen. At 165 views, Entrepreneurs and their networks in MENA: an article and project using big data (and policy recommendations too!) was the results of a much larger grant project supported by the IRDC involving 14 MENA countries looking at the networks used by entrepreneurs. (I wrote about the five day workshop we had in 2012 starting in daily blog posts - day 1 here). Taha, Lotfi and I found that there was significant difference between entrepreneurs at various stages of venture development for network size and network diversity and that entrepreneurs with larger networks (number of advisers and more diverse (from different environments, e.g. private, work, professional advisers are more likely to launch their business in a short time. However, most entrepreneurs in the region have shallow and narrow networks... which leads us to our policy recommendations... 

The number of networks used by entrepreneurs in the MENA region

Number 6:

The third article snapshot - in a way a culmination of a project begun in August 2010 in the very room I am currently working in in Lorraine, Quebec - had 178 views. Article snapshot: “Technological innovation in the United Arab Emirates: process and challenges” is about the innovation process of an Emirati inventor and entrepreneur - Mariam Al Hallami, the first author, found that while the process used by the entrepreneur in the UAE is similar to that of entrepreneurs in the West, the lack of Industrial Research Centers puts a hamper scaling up inventions and innovations.

R&D expenditure - the MENA region needs to step up spending!

So that was 10 through 6... the top 5 will follow shortly....

Article snapshot: “Technological innovation in the United Arab Emirates: process and challenges”

This blog post is a snapshot of an accepted article in a peer reviewed journal. If you would like to read it click here. If you wish to quote the information in this post please cite:

Al Hallami, M., Van Horne, C., Huang, V.Z., 2013. “Technological innovation in the United Arab Emirates: process and challenges”, Transnational Corporations Review. 5(2), 46-59.
Just today we found out that an article that had been hanging around for awhile (and most recently updated with some new data) was accepted for publication in a peer reviewed journal! Did I mention the first author is an Emirati? Young woman? Just now finishing her Master's? Well, yeah :) This just shows what hard work can accomplish.

The article's journey started a few years ago - when Mariam and I worked on it for a conference. It then became the spark for a chapter the two of us published on Innovation in Abu Dhabi - which was just published this year. Whereas the chapter looked at innovation from a strategic perspective, this article looks specifically at the process and the challenges faced by entrepreneurs in that process.

There are two main questions that motivated the research:

1. Is there anything unique about the R&D and innovation process used by the Emirati entrepreneur? 
2. Could the process be more efficient?
1. What steps in the process are most in need of external support?

R&D data from MENA and the UAE

First, the data from the 2011 UAE GEM Report paint a bleak picture of the technological innovations even used by entrepreneurs in the UAE. I explained more fully in another blog post, but basically close to 100% of SMEs are in industries considered low to no-tech.

Furthermore, the R&D investment rates of the UAE are low - and even when the whole MENA Region is considered, expenditures represent less than 1% of world wide R&D spending.

Adapted from UNESCO Institute of Statistic, “A Global Perspective On R&D” (2009)

Those aren't statistics that make the innovation researcher's heart swell for sure! On the other hand, there is nowhere to go but up!

Case study

There are inventors and entrepreneurs in the UAE though - Emiratis with patents and companies trying to bring high tech products to the global market. The case study follows the innovation process of a round floating mobile platform, termed the “floating villa” by the Al Hallami Group.  It is a newly introduced product to solve problems such as the lack of space and land in major cities and tourist attraction places. “The purpose of this innovation is to introduce a feasible solution to minimize environmental damages while making use of sea area.  It is a mixture of an environmental friendly, strong, safe, stable; size variable and mobile construction that is a blend of both a yacht and a villa.” (Al Hallami, 2010).

Innovation Process

From studying the idea to commercialization process, interviews, site visits and reviewing the patents the following process was identified. It is similar to ones found in the literature - there are phases and it is iterative - but how it mainly differs is the lack of access to public industrial research centers or universities research groups who could assist local companies with applied research projects or even projects that take "theory to the shop floor". I am very familiar with these types of relationships in Canada (OK, maybe I wrote a PhD thesis about it or something like that) and they do work... in more ways than just simple technology transfer.

Al Hallami Group “Floating Villa” innovation process

Suggestions

As a result of this paper R&D exploration in processes, two main suggestions were made. There appears to be a need to increase support and government backed initiatives for large-scale R&D processes by creating government funded applied research centers, funding opportunities for collaborative research with universities and researchers and increase support for graduate engineering and technical education for the local Emirati population.

Secondly, creating R&D focused privately based venture capital funds could be encouraged perhaps through the development of an Islamic based venture capital framework where funds could be considered part of the Zakat[1] every Muslim annually pays.

I am pleased with this article and happy that it has finally found a home. Of course I will update the post when it appears in Google Scholar - I celebrate every new addition to my profile there and I think my nerdyness has rubbed off on the lead author as well!!!!!

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[1] The yearly act of giving charity and supporting the community based on the total wealth of the individual. 

The Strategy of Perseverance: or Being too Stubborn to Quit!

* Update: the chapter is in press and the book can be purchased here: http://www.infoagepub.com/products/Contemporary-Perspectives-on-Technological-Innovation-Management-and-Policy-vol-2

Today we signed the copyright papers for our chapter. OUR CHAPTER – on innovation – in the UAE – when not a whole heck a lot of people have written about it.

Did I tell you that the first author is an Emirati young woman, Mariam Omran Al Hallami? That she started the research process two years ago and has won a best student paper award for the first draft of the research – and now we continued it into a chapter – a good chapter – on innovation in the UAE.

The title of the chapter is “Innovation processes in the Middle East: an Emirati Perspective” – Mariam (through my brainwashing I guess) believes that understanding the process will allow researchers to build better processes and policy makers to build better policies to support innovation. Now, I will post another story about what we wrote about closer to the release date of the book (planned for the AOM Conference in August in Boston – where we have organized a workshop on developing research eco-systems in the Middle East). Today, I want to write about the process – and the strategy we developed to work together to research and write.

It started two years ago in August, Mariam wrote me from Switzerland saying she was bored – I was in Montreal being Auntie (not bored but wanting to work too). She wanted to work on something, did I have a suggestion. Well, I did – write a paper for the AIB – on innovation processes. I know she had worked with her Dad on filing the patents for his invention/innovation – the floating villa – she was in the best position to write a case study on it!  The Floating Villa website.

The Floating Villa against an Abu Dhabi skyline

First step – I sent her a ton of articles to read and gave her key word searches to do – she did – I told her to write notes – she did – I told her to work on a research question (and we did for the entire 6 weeks before we handed in the first paper). She wrote the interview questions, rewrote them, did the interview, developed an outline, etc., etc. All this time I am in Montréal and Mariam is in Switzerland (and then Abu Dhabi). The paper was sent, she presented it at the conference thanks to her wonderful brother who chaperoned her – and she won best student paper!

The story doesn’t end there – last AOM I saw a Call for Chapters – I sent it to her and she said yes, let’s do it! So we write an proposal – it was accepted – Yeah! But now we have to write the chapter….

So, we brainstormed over gmail and gtalk – how would we adapt it – I wanted a strategy focus of course – so that is what we (sorry Mariam, she did ) – but I thought the way it was written was too linear, so I suggested changes – organize the Strategic Plans by themes. “What themes” – “Uhm, you tell me!” I did what research advisors from the beginning of time did – I forced the student to do it herself – and of course she did. I think there may have been a grumble or two about co-authors and actually writing J But she persevered through the slog of analysis – and she did it well.

Then we needed more words – what would we write – we found more words of course and synthesis and more recommendations – and it got done (under the wire, but it got done). Then the corrections came back, not major, but a lot of formatting to the style of the editor – ugh – but it got done.

And now, nearly two years after that first email we will have a peer-reviewed chapter. With Mariam as the REAL first author, not there because she is an Emirati, there because she worked hard and wrote the darn thing!

So – to future students I will make you read it… to learn about innovation in your country, but also to show you that you can do it – it won’t be an instant thing, but it is possible to add to the body of knowledge about anything, it just takes hard work, creativity and guidance from a professor. But you can do it too!