GCC youth want
intellectual and
technological
recognition for their country,and for
their governments 66% to promote youth entrepreneurship
programmes
GCC youth rank
opening up their
own business
as amongst
their top three
priorities and
ambitions in life
To overcome educational challenges, achieve high standards and recognition and innovation and experience economic and societal growth, Gulf nations must innovate both in technology and teaching practices. The entrepreneurial talent and spirit of the youth must be engaged to accelerate economic growth, along with continuous innovations in education and technology to deliver quality educational outcomes, increase its scale at low costs and enhance its access and collaboration.
Conceptualised by GEMS Education, in response to our Leaders’ vision of gaining innovation competitiveness.
Supports open innovation, collaboration and access to skills and talent to build scalable solutions to educational challenges.
Guiding entrepreneurs, enhancing their business plans and aiding its transformation into marketable offerings, driving innovation.
Will be built around four core pillars, shown below, each playing a crucial role in fostering and enabling innovation.
Awarding, mentoring and incubating high potential people and ideas.
The Arab Innovation Centre for Education and its four pillars aim to clarify the direction of innovation goals and efforts, promoting and aiding the rethinking and resolving of regional and global educational challenges.
Innovation Space and Academy
- Multifunctional space to inspire, energise and innovate.
- Create a platform and community of thought-leaders and the public for collaborative learning, mentoring, researching, coproducing, testing and knowledge transfer.
- Centre to showcase knowledge through events and experiences, such as regular talks and capacitybuilding workshops.
Innovation Research
- Research and experiment beyond conventional methods, leveraging global best practices.
- Development of insights and scalable solutions to make learning accessible to anyone, anytime, anywhere and anyhow.
- Engagement with the public and collaboration with leading researchers in various fields to understand needs of end-user and cross-pollinate research efforts.
Innovation Testing and Prototyping
- Promote constant refinement with all research ideas to be vetted for commercial and social viability and scalability.
- All GEMS schools, students and educators are potential co-innovators.
- Provides valuable insight and iterative learning into feasibility of concept.
Innovation Incubation
- Expediting start-up ideation and progress through a combination of financial support, guidance and training to tackle educational challenges, promote innovation and entrepreneurship and generate potential strategic interest ideas.
- Next EdVenture Accelerator Programme: Aimed to attract, award and mentor start-ups with feasible solutions, through a competitive application process. Awarding pre-seed investment of USD 10K-50K in exchange for 5-10% equity; and time-limited mentoring and operational support.
- GEMS/Global Education Challenge Prize: Declaration of thoroughly researched and defined educational challenges, offering suitable financial and non-financial incentives and rewards to teams who can first or most effectively meet the specific challenge, providing radical leaps in understanding education.
- AICE Angels for Education: Network of high-net worth business individuals, investing in AICE’s activities and participating start-ups.
Why?
With the potential saturation of jobs in the public sector, entrepreneurship opportunities need to be created for youth in order to sustain the growth of the UAE.
UAE youth comprise of many nationalities who are exposed to different cultures and dynamic ideas.
There is an encouraging trend that GCC youth today want to be decision makers and agents of change.
This presents the region with amazing opportunities for generating economic growth, diversifying its economy and enhancing its human capital.
To be amongst the most innovative nations in the world…..we must do more.
TEA Entrepreneurial Activity 2011 – Source: Global Entrepreneurship Monitor
The UAE has a lower TEA* score compared to other developed countries
* TEA refers to % of adult population that is considering to start a business or have a new business within the last 42 months.
Where?
The Arab Innovation Centre for Education will initially establish itself at the GEMS Blended Learning Plaza in Dubai Silicon Oasis, which was specially designed with the following in mind:
Classrooms are not the only form of learning space – while the classroom is assumed to be a primary location of learning, the Blended Learning Plaza provides the opportunity to learn outside of the classroom.
Social interaction – as a growing part of learning, students are increasingly motivated by social interaction with their peers. The Blended Learning Plaza supports the shift in pedagogy that harnesses team activities and collaborative learning.
Technology – we know that our students are digital natives and see technology as a natural component of their lives. The technologies present in the Blended Learning Plaza support learning with the tools that students know best.
Out of sequence learning – although traditional tools present information in a deliberate, sequential manner, today’s students are comfortable with overlapping discussion threads and parallel activities that may span different types of media, devices, and communities. Frequency of these discussion threads is enhanced through the layout and spaces created.
Authors of content – providing students with the opportunity to construct content rather than simply consume it, the Blended Learning Plaza provides an environment in which they can become active authors of content, including video documents, online blogs, and other forms of digital expression
The Arab Innovation Centre for Education is brought to you by GEMS Education