Knowledge Based Economy

That was the theme of the conference I attended from 12 January to 13 January named "Arabian Knowledge & Economy Association". It was the first of its type in the region and it was so advanced that I felt I was in Finland or Sweden or any one of those very developed countries.

The Conference hosted several world class speakers from all over the world. The agenda of the first day was about presentations explaining the theory behind "knowledge-based" economies and that it is the next big thing after Agricultural Era (19^th Century), Industrial Era(Early 20^th Century) and Information Technology Era (21^st Century). It introduced new buzz words like "KIZ" (Key Innovation Zones), BenchLearning rather than Benchmarking, intellectual capital and its relation to structural capital and human capital, 7P Blueprint (P⁷), transforming competition to collaboration, and replace Business Planning with Innovation Strategy.

Alot of successful stories were shared such as Malaysia's Experience in building the World's Intelligence City of CyberJaya, Australia's Desert knowledge Experience, Microsoft's efforts in driving innovation through its own innovation centers & research labs spread all over the world, and SAP's experience in corporate innovation where they discuss their funnelling ideas and an example of how they are thinking of having decentralized electrical transmission system by installing smart grids in place of the existing ancient ones, and 2 more presentations that I can't recall coz I snoozed in them (HEY, I blame it on the lunch). So overall, my mind was blown with the rich density of information absorbed during those 2 days.

Other than the rich density of information that blew my mind over the 2 days, we had fun for a while in one of the workshops called "youth of the future". The point of this workshop is to assume you sit with 3 other individuals and try to come up with an innovative idea that could capitalize on the knowledge of the resources available at hand. Money is not an issue as they would provide you with at least $ 500,000. Unlike the rest of my colleagues, I decided to participate in a new group. It is a chance of meeting new people and a rare opportunity where I hoped to be proven wrong that the mentality of the new generation of Saudi youth is not as silly as I've always seen it.

Case 1: a group of young high school students demonstrated their creation of building a small robot hand whose sole task is to open and close a pipe valve. Sounds simple? Think again. The valve is at a depth of 1500 meters. Not a single human being can dive that deep because of the pressure. Diving in would take 8 hours and getting out is another 8 hours. Apparently, something malfunctioned and they needed to close that valve. ARAMCO's best solution was bringing a German Consulting company who'd do a feasibility study and had to import their machinery from Germany so they could do the simple process of closing the valve, for an amount around 60 000 dollars. The whole process would take around 7 to 8 months. So this group demonstrated a prototype of their creation and it showed us the process of how it hugs to the pipe and align itself with the valve and open it and close it. I was amazed. Its a greaaaaaaaaaat idea.

POSTIVE KUDO POINTS...:)

Case 2:

In an attempt to be a little friendly to those who were with me in the table (actually, I have some business cards that I wanna distribute :P), I introduce myself to and I ask him..."so, what encouraged you to come to this conference..?"

And what an answer I get: "7areem 7areeem 7areeem" (Women, women, Women).

My God, those Bedouin animals never cease to exist.

NEGATIVE KUDO Points :S

Case 3:

Part of our exercise was to deduce the capabilities & aspiration of your fellow colleagues where each one of them would discuss a unique project that each one of them participated in. I met this elegant, ambitious, extremely professional gentleman who is launching a new website, unique in its service of building local social networks all over Saudi Arabia through Event Management. It is like building facebook with the events application tailored to each individual's interests. E.g. you'd be notified about car or art-related events if your area of interest were in the following areas. I believe that this service would be cruicial since the country lacks in the service of promoting its events. You only know about events, or conferences through word of mouth or from fortunately being in one of those few random active communities. I was impressed by the idea and the presentation. His website is supposed to be launched in 2 weeks. It's called www.feinak.com. I'll definitely be the first one to use it.

POSITIVE KUDO POINT ...:)

Case 4:

So a coffee break. I wanted to know more about the identity of the other, shy member of our group. He was not very talkative. So I tried getting something out of him.

"so, where you from?"

"Khobar"

"aha...mashalla, you travelled all the way from there to attend this conference. I really applaud you for your ambition"

"Actually, I just came coz my father SENT me. I am not really interested."

WHAT THE...? :S. COZ HIS FATHER SENT HIM? :S :S. What a shame. I hold my rage and try to move on...

"so where do you wanna study?"

"ah here in khobar. I don't wanna go outside KSA. I hate travelling. I feel homesick. In fact, I am feeling homesick right now"

:S :S...HOME SICK? ITS JUST 2 DAYS and Jeddah is only 600 kms away. Its not like he went to Canada or something.

I concluded that there is no point to further proceed in this silly discussion

NEGATIVE KUDO POINTS ....:S

Case 5

Part of our exercise is to pass by other tables and explore other teams' projects and attempt to contribute and add ways to develop their ideas. While there are some good ideas, you'd be astonished by the amount of ridiculous ideas out there such as this guy.

"well, unlike the rest of the businesses, our business would be unique in its service. It will help in serving the shareholders..."

A moment of silence as we were still anticipating more from him.

"yep, that's my idea"

"that's your idea? Fine... what's the name of the project?"

"no name"

*sighs* "so give me an example of one of the services you'll provide to the so-called 'shareholders' "

"well, we could use the money to fund our university education & use the rest for our wedding"

Good God. Is this what they call business these days..

I wish I was in Texas. At least guns are legal there