Why competitiveness is vital for Industry 2022?
By Dr. Ray O. Johnson, CEO, Technology Innovation Institute
As competition and specialization intensifies across industries in both the public and private sectors in our increasingly digitalized world, we need to understand what factors result in business success today.
Is success defined by being able to achieve industry distinctions in your field of expertise? Is it defined by ensuring a happy and productive workforce while boosting the bottom line as a result? Is it defined by identifying the best tech solutions to drive the marketability of your products and services and thereby achieve sizeable returns on investment?
Competitiveness is an important factor in the success of a business, and the competition is getting more demanding. Some of the key benefits of competitiveness include:
· Helping your organization increase the certainty of outcomes
· Allowing you to focus resources (time, talent, and finances) to maximize ROI
· Helping you achieve organizational momentum
· Helping you attract talent, brand alliances, and issue-focused investors (donors, foundations)
· Enabling you to measure progress more accurately
So, what are some of the main initiatives that we can put in place to achieve that elusive attribute — often referred to as the competitive advantage? For one thing, it helps to have a clear understanding of your core competencies. Similarly, a comprehensive awareness of the competitor’s strengths and competencies will help us understand how to meet the needs of our target customers by adding value.
Over three years, the world has pivoted to adopt a technology focus. We all endured unprecedented lockdowns and restrictions imposed following the outbreak of COVID-19. We learned that technology was the single biggest hero, ensuring that we could all continue to carry on business — if not as usual — at least in some competitive form. A digital and tech focus in everything we do has become a survival skill.
At the Technology Innovation Institute, a leading global research center and applied research pillar of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC), we work at the intersection of discovery science and technology to develop breakthrough solutions for the world’s most pressing challenges. Whether it is building the Arab world’s first quantum computer or operating the MENA region’s first Electromagnetic Compatibility Labs to carry out indigenous testing of high-energy phenomena, or even training cutting-edge drone swarms that can participate in search and rescue missions, we understand the need to keep moving, reinventing, and reimagining. Competitiveness and resilience are the new business mantras, and never more so than in a technology-focused industry.
We joined as a sustaining member of the Global Federation of Competitiveness Councils (GFCC) late last year, a move that helps us align with best practices in global competitiveness as well as the GFCC’s 2021 Global Competitiveness Principles. Reflecting today’s competitive realities, this set of relevant guidelines helps train our focus on the future state we hope to achieve, and it points to potential pathways for progress to revitalize and expand opportunities for growth, innovation, and prosperity worldwide.
The GFCC Principles help embrace and develop new policies and strategies, plan for new investments, and adopt new business models and organizational forms to bring the new vision to reality and harness a more inclusive innovation ecosystem.
Through this synergy with the GFCC, we will inspire research into new focus areas and engage with businesses, governments, universities, innovators, and thinkers around the world to leverage these principles in shaping an enlightened future for us all.
While we redouble our efforts to shape this inclusive innovation economy that will elevate the UAE among the frontline of technology-enabled nations over the next 50 years, we are ever-mindful of our role in making history at every turn. This is a considerable responsibility, and we are well prepared to shoulder our duty in providing innovative solutions to the nation’s most challenging problems as we support humanity in future-proofing our world.
