On Saturday, the temperatures dropped to 7 degrees Celsius. Those who were checking the temperature from their cell phones said the weather forecast was indicating that although it was 8 degrees, the wind chill made it feel like 4 degrees. Sunday morning was no different. The sun remained hidden behind clouds. “I never knew it gets this cold in Riyadh,” said one of the delegates. “Whenever you think of Saudi Arabia you think of hot sun and the searing desert.” Well, one more myth has been broken about Saudi Arabia.
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It was John Kao who warmed the morning with his opening presentation. Known widely as “Mr. Creativity,” he calls himself an innovation activist. Based in San Francisco, he is chairman of the Institute for Large Scale Innovation, whose i20 Group is an association of 30 national “Chief Innovation Officers.” His presentation was quite revealing. "Innovation has led small nations such as Finland to become global players," he said. "A country’s importance no longer is gauged by the size of its population or its GDP but rather by its human resources — its brain power, or the power of the country’s people to generate ideas. Take the case of big pharmaceutical companies. Once large employers based in the United States and Switzerland, there now are pharmaceutical companies managed by a handful of people because most of the tasks are outsourced, to India, Poland or elsewhere. The idea is to harness the power of innovation.”
Kao said innovation is a continuous, infinite process. “The world has changed. Never in history has there been as much collaboration as we see today. If we can share ideas and learn from each others’ experiences, then our interaction here at GCF will be much more valuable.”
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John Quelch, who moderated the first session, tickled the audience with some light, but telling, humor. During the Q&A session, he said he was criticized for not taking questions from women attendees last year. “I don’t want to suffer that fate again, and, in pure self-defense, let me go and see if there are questions from the women’s section,” he announced. Sure enough there was a question from the women’s side. The person asked why innovation has not been used to end poverty or end drug abuse. “Well, you asked the same question last year,” Quelch quipped amid laughter from the audience.
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David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, provided the audience with some hard data. The most interesting was that Saudis are among the biggest watchers of YouTube videos in the world. “This indicates that Saudis are very tech savvy — that they are very comfortable with mobile technology, so there is every reason to believe that the next big ideas will emerge from this place,” Drummond said. He advised one should not fear failure while undertaking the exercise of innovation. “There has to be a tolerance of failure. The Silicon Valley is full of success stories by people who have failed the first time and the second time,” he said. Amr Khashoggi, a businessman from Jeddah, asked Drummond if Google would set up research labs in Saudi Arabia. “Now that you know that we are among the most tech-savvy people how about Google setting up research labs here?” asked Khashoggi. “Sure," replied Drummond. "We have centers of excellence all over the world, except Antarctica, and we are thinking about setting up research labs in here.”
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At another different session, all eyes focused on Oscar-winning filmmaker Jake Eberts. His classic film “Journey to Mecca” was fresh in the minds of many Saudis who have seen it in the IMAX theater at Alkhobar’s Scitech Center. He was mobbed at the end of the session where he explained how he came into the film world accidentally. “I was born in the Canadian province of Quebec. It was a small town; there was no television. There was no cinema in our town of 5,000 people. My father was a great storyteller; he loved to tell stories. In those days I had a very bad stutter. I couldn’t speak very well, so he would encourage me to tell the stories. He would narrate to me just to teach me how to speak. I must have been four or five years old. But I did not find out till I was 35 that storytelling through the medium of films would eventually become my career. I trained as an engineer and failed miserably, and then I tried to become a banker and failed in that field, too. Then I became a filmmaker.”
Eberts, 69, is a movie producer, executive and financier. He is known for risk-taking and producing consistently high-caliber movies including “Chariots of Fire” (1981), “Gandhi” (1982), “Dances with Wolves” (1990) and the successful animated feature “Chicken Run” (2000). Eberts says that without corporate sponsors a film like “Journey to Mecca” would never be made. “You need that kind of help.
Such films that carry historic messages cannot be done on a commercial basis. In such films the focus is on storytelling. I remember how Mohammed Al-Fayed helped me finance ‘Chariots of Fire.’” He spoke about the Arabic version of his film “Gandhi.” “We went to Ramallah and got it made into Arabic and took Gandhi’s message of nonviolence to the Palestinian youth.”
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Visitors to the GCF might be welcomed with a smile, a cup of coffee and some unexpected efficiency. One attendee arrived at Riyadh's King Khaled Airport to discover when hiring a car that his Saudi license had expired. “Stuck in the airport on a Thursday lunchtime with no license was a potential nightmare,” he said.
He went to the arrivals terminal police station where he was greeted with huge smiles all round and a chorus of “mafi mushkillahs”. He said that after handing over his documents that he suspected he might be the object of some insider constabulary humor as he was seated and asked if he would care for a coffee.
“Less than five minutes later, quite literally, the coffee arrived together with the license on the side plate,” he said. “Amazing is an understatement. The guys were chuckling at my dropped-jaw expression.”
Gone it seems are the queues and Byzantine bureaucracy of the paper license at least and a very satisfying demonstration of decent technology humanely and efficiently handled.
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The 918 Spyder, Porsche’s first hybrid vehicle on show in the coffee lounge at the forum is one of the world’s most exotic cars. Powered both by a 500 hp V8 engine and two electric motors, it is proof, as one admirer noted, that Green can be Mean. It has been the object of long and wishful looks by those old enough know better. As one Arab News’ roving ear overheard a conversation between two “mature” admirers at the event who fitted the profile.
“That,” said one, “is the most beautiful objet d’art let alone car.” After a moment’s reflection the other reflected wryly: “If I drove that, I would die one of two ways; either I would drive too fast or my wife would kill me.”
