Towards Innovation Policy in Abu Dhabi: Indicators, Benchmarking and Natural Resource Rich Economies

IKED has carried out analysis and research to help put in place better methods and indicators to measure progress in the transition of Natural Resource-based Economies (NRE) towards Knowledge-Based Economies (KBE). Among its key projects, IKED worked with the central authorities of Abu Dhabi on the development of an innovation index tailored to reflecting progress on the specific challenges confronting NREs and to develop recommendations for further work in this field.

The report ventures into extensive international benchmarking of Abu Dhabi's performance with regard to factors of relevance to innovation. It identifies a number of gaps, which hinder innovation in Abu Dhabi. Despite the impressive overall economic performance and strength in infrastructure - including, importantly, in Information and Communications Technology (ICT), the report concludes Abu Dhabi could do much better.

An in-depth examination and purposeful guidance of innovation policy is impeded by lack of data, and also a lack of indicators and frameworks suitable for identifying and addressing the issues that most critically influence innovation in Abu Dhabi specifically, and NRE more generally. On this basis, the report advances groundbreaking work - the first of its kind in Abu Dhabi and the GCC countries - to launch a first innovation survey, and also to develop and calibrate an innovation index, based on the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) approach, tailored to the context-specific conditions in Abu Dhabi.