Is innovation a skill that can be taught?

Underpinning the launch today of UAE Innovation Week is a conundrum: How do we become more innovative as a country and is it something that is even capable of being taught? While it is obvious that the fast-changing nature of the world means instilling a sense of inventiveness will be key if we want to continue to thrive as a country, how to achieve that is less clear.

The schedule for the week – with events scheduled across the Emirates and involving examples of innovation in practice and centres where it can thrive – shows that there is not a single answer to that conundrum. Instead the focus is on creating the environment in which fresh ideas, unexplored solutions and new ways of thinking can flourish. Inevitably, this involves a multidisciplinary and multifaceted approach.

This week will see the launch of the innovation hub programme, with Abu Dhabi Education Council creating clubs in more than 250 schools across the emirate, involving science and technology subjects. This reflects the importance of educational styles on inventiveness, with teaching methods based on critical thinking replacing those based on rote learning. This has to start from the very first years of school, when minds are their most malleable.

Another part of the puzzle is to show what is possible by giving real-life examples where innovation is solving problems facing the country. The first experimental desalination plant powered by renewable energy will be inaugurated at Masdar today. The location for that is significant, in part because it shows the different but complementary roles played by government and industry-sponsored research. As Behjat AlYousuf, the Interim Provost of Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, explains on this page, there needs to be both applied research – where a company seeks to make a better widget – and so-called “blue sky” research where the applications may not be immediately obvious. The latter tends to be funded through the public sector.

One reason why this focus on innovation is so important is because the future will change in ways that we cannot even envisage now, just as the internet and smartphones changed lives for the current generation. Instilling a mindset of innovation will allow the next generation to meet whatever the challenge will be and to explot it for the benefit of future generations.