 Innovation has the potential to enhance growth and employment. It's creative destruction. Technology creates opportunities. It also destroys some. Overall, I strongly believe that it's a net positive. Once you embrace technology, once you embrace change and innovation, it becomes easier for you to catch up with other developed economies. So the future is about innovation. The future is about government and business working together in ways they haven't done before. The future is dreaming like our kids dream and thank you in exponential. Udacity has a very close connection to Jordan in that we will educate lots of people tech skills with the world's best skills in areas like machine learning, deep learning and even self-driving cars. In the last 12 months, we have established a customer support hub in Jordan to service our customers across Europe, Middle East and Africa. We recognize the potential that Jordan could offer based on the availability of technical and language skills. The government of Jordan for a long time has provided a great place for multinationals to build a stable footprint and team. We're very quickly expanding our presence in the region and we hope to reach many more customers in the coming year. We're just about to start a pilot program for range extended electric buses in the city of Amman. Combining this technology with the bus manufacturers technology, getting this stuff into Jordan is going to have enormous benefits in fuel savings, cost savings and a cleaner environment. I couldn't have been happier when we discovered Elberhaus and that they've been there for 50 years and that they make buses and they do a good job of it. We are using the ionization technology. It's environmentally friendly, just mimicking the processes of nature. This initiative will be a very important one. For water, for food and at the end for national security. We are building human capacity in this new field. So today and tomorrow as we see the regional market be interested in this area, all the capacity we've developed in Jordan is applicable in these other markets. Jordan could absolutely become an extremely important hub for drone innovation, drone services, drone ecosystems in the Middle East and the larger Africa region. We're actually right now training Jordanians in the use of our technology and its applications across the country. Jordan is extremely progressive, works very quickly. There's a lot of infrastructure and opportunity economically, politically to actually do big projects and do them fast. We need to introduce new technologies and new techniques, especially areas related to stem cell regenerative medicine where we lead the way in our laws, in our talents, in our scientists, in our laboratories. As a young generation of nuclear engineers working in a nuclear plant we are aiming to enhance peaceful nuclear energy in several applications, such as producing and marketing radioisotope that is used in medical, health, agricultural and industrial applications. Jordan will bring highly qualified and trained manpower to work in the field of peaceful nuclear energy in the region. The follow is a wood workshop, a metal workshop, a training center, laser cutting, 3D printing, robotics. You have the traditional way of manufacturing and at the same time you have the digital way of manufacturing. Hello World Kids is a project that combines education, entrepreneurship and technology in one product. Our focus is to build a new generation with excellent technical skills, entrepreneurial skills and high competitiveness. We are on board aspiring entrepreneurs and train them, we invest in them and then we help them accelerate their businesses meaning that what would typically take a start of two years to build and spend tens even hundreds of thousands of dollars. We help them build it in a fraction of that time and cost. We managed to tap the gaming side by creating the Jordan gaming lab, by working with schools through the app challenge, by teaching the teachers how to work on applications and mobile development and design with their students. We will see highest employment and a growth in our startup scene here in Jordan. Microsoft's experience as an investor in Jordan has been extremely positive in all aspects. I've seen many young people in Jordan who really want to change the world and want to become part of the global universe of great engineers. Ordainian people are very interested in innovation, very willing to encourage it and remove barriers to it and I think ultimately that's going to be very important for the entire region. Except the failure that comes along with innovation and to create the kind of culture that supports that is really important and it's impressive how Jordan is doing that. Like any country, we have challenges in Jordan but more opportunities than challenges and I love your youth. I think they're the future of your country. So I think Jordan's future is in a good spot. I've always been fascinated by the ability of entrepreneurs to take a brick and see it at a house and build the whole city. But new enterprises need solid ground to build on and that's Jordan's vision. Now as you can see Jordan has managed to create an innovative, enabling ecosystem. Obviously something that's essential to creating the kind of growth that Jordan wants to see over the next several years and certainly it's inevitable that the youth in the region are going to want this kind of ecosystem to move forward. Now the talent is here in Jordan and it's now really about harnessing the hunger to provide the kind of ecosystem and to really create the kind of future that the young people are asking for. They want you to listen to them and they want you to take a bet on their ideas and innovations. Now the people you're about to meet are a select group of entrepreneurs they're talented, they're self-dependent and they're pioneers of viable competitive products. I want the panelists to join me now on the stage. Now over the last several days these folks have been able to gather not just here in the Dead Sea but also in Amman they've been talking to each other about ways not only to create this ecosystem and to further this ecosystem in Jordan itself but also to broaden this experience for the entire MENA region. They've developed a bond already and I'm very, very excited to introduce them to you. I'm joined on stage by the president of Expedia, Amman Bhutani. I'm also joined by the co-founder of Aliyua Ahmad Moor, the CEO of Mixed Dimensions, Mohamed Daslak, Abir Sekali, inventor and architect as well as the co-founder and co-director of Amman Design Week, Reem Hori who's the CEO and founder of Come on Inc and Kaushal Shah who's the founding director of Aspire Services. Now I want to kick off by just giving you a brief overview of who these folks are and what they actually do. I'm going to kick off then with Amman. I'm excited to be here and very grateful to have this opportunity. My role at Expedia is to lead the brand Expedia Group. That includes the global brand Expedia, Travelocity and Orbits in the U.S., e-bookers in Europe and What If in Australia among other smaller brands. Today I'm excited to announce that Expedia has opened a product and technology office in Jordan where Jordanian engineers will be building software for our brands around the world and serving our customers globally. Reem Hori. We aim to at Camin to deconstruct the misconception that impact and profit are mutually exclusive. So we design, we use human centric design and social innovation to design the models of the future for an inclusive economic system. So an example for that is we worked with an enterprise that wanted to focus on customer excellence. Everyone was complaining about the youth. They're complacent. They want to work in the public sector. It's the culture of the region. When we spoke to the youth we realized that one, no one asked them what they wanted to start with. And two, brain science tells us that the reason why they didn't know how to get to where they wanted to go is because when we live under chronic stress due to unemployment, due to poverty, due to being a refugee our ability to use the skills that we need to innovate completely shuts down. But if we create the conditioning environment not design the solutions on their behalf but just create that conditioning environment for them then the sky is the limit for economic and social mobility. And our results were fantastic. All the youth had a financial and social plan, all the companies that invested in us had growth in their bottom line because they saw better performance and better teamwork. And most importantly the social enterprise we designed broke even a year prior to plan and to industry standards because its impact was its very compelling business proposition. Mohamed. Yeah, so it's Mohamed. I can't pronounce him today. So I'm from Mixed Dimensions as a Jordanian company. We started at the Royal Scientific Society. We focused on 3D printing and gaming R&D software development. In 2013 since we're working on IPs and want to commercialize our technology we decided to join the Alchemist Accelerator in San Francisco. At that time they were calling us the crazy Jordanians. We built our technology, we built our product market fed and we came back to Amman because we believe that the talent that made me and my co-founder Baha is already available here. We wanted to build our engineering team. We have now around 50 engineers working with us in Amman and we're engaged and focused in different initiatives to spread 3D printing, 3D technologies in general, whether it was in Jordan or in the region. I'm proud to be here with this panel I believe that we're going to be doing a lot of things for Jordan moving forward. Thank you. Hello. Thank you Haidli. Well I'm currently co-directing a beautiful initiative called Amman Design Week that's been initiated and supported by Her Majesty Queen Rania Abdullah. But I think we'll get into Amman Design Week as we move into the discussion and I'd like to talk about my personal story and innovation that I've been developing for many years now. There are 60 million displaced people around the world and as a result of this crisis you know communities are struggling to survive and more so there are 1 billion people that live without adequate shelter worldwide. The most fundamental aspect of human existence is shelter and it's a you know universal human need and these kinds of numbers is kind of devastating and it causes one to feel helpless and so we as designers look at problems and try to find solutions and so I decided to act and I started thinking about shelter that could help rebuild and help refugees in Jordan envision their new lives not just an adequate shelter but a dignified shelter and so I designed a special solar absorbing fabric that basically absorbed the sun's energy and turned it into solar and thermal energy and so thus providing comforts of daily life like electricity and water and I won an award for my design but I'm most importantly the design has a social potential to be a dignified shelter and also to leave displaced communities together it's a home and as I continue developing and actually trying to build the tent myself I gain deep insight into material and building processes and collaborating with various communities and people from you know different backgrounds and professions as well as communities that need a shelter you know made me understand that architecture can must adapt to different contexts social environments and settings by using local materials and building technology so it wasn't about imposing a shelter on a community but developing a design that you know that the community can be engaged with and I think in this context you know architecture becomes a social and cultural practice and this is where I found the true and meaningful timeless meaning of innovation and technology so my innovation is making a home Kasho I come from India but I've been here for 15 years I've set up an outsourcing services model to service top-notch online and e-commerce companies in the US it's been a delight to be here for 15 years we've created some of the best technologies comparable to anywhere in the world beside of course with a very small team and the innovation has to continue to skill, re-skill and that's because of the changing technologies all the time especially in the last few years we've done that very successfully you have a very strong core team of Jordanians all our resources are Jordanians actually and it's been a fantastic journey I think it's great to hear that a company like Expedia has come here because that's the kind of company we service in the US and you will see the benefit of the resources over here which are hungry for love sorry hungry for to learn and hungry for love also well I on a lighter note I found my love in Jordan I was hungry and I came here so it's been great they're diligent I've had my clients telling me that it's not just that we give good quality but we like the Jordanian people I've recently been to visit one of my biggest clients in the US and he two years ago he told me that oh we're going to finish we're not going to arch us anymore because we're going to take everything in house two years hence I met him just like he said you know what even I like you guys so I'm going to continue so it's been a delight thank you hi my name is Ahmed Moore it's a huge privilege to be here thank you Your Majesties and thank you the World Economic Forum and to the moderator and rest of the panelists as well I co-founded a lending business we're a mission oriented company but really private sector profit focused we focus on small businesses we focus on product really a trade finance product to them we've underwritten about four and a half million dollars most of that here in Jordan to a hundred small businesses although we also operate in the UAE we've raised 4.8 million dollars from local venture capitalists as well so Dash Ventures in Silicon Badia and MVI which is run by Mr. Fadir Elmour so when we think about enterprise value over time and kind of the tech component in the business it really goes to the credit assessment we live in a part of the world where access to high fidelity information is difficult to come by and so you make use of what you have and so we've built credit assessment techniques that incorporate behavioral data for our assessment so it's really just a statistical model that uses user generated data to help us make an assessment of whether somebody is going to repay a loan but it's working and we're growing and we love being in Jordan I'm very happy to be here so I want to kick off with a beer because we're talking about an ecosystem and enabling young people to do all of the things that they want to do but essential to that is a home and right now here in Jordan for example you have 1.4 million refugees you have 5 million Syrian refugees a big question on everyone's mind is what happens next how are we going to save ourselves for the next generation and what you're really working on is creating homes for people so that they can inevitably have the skill set and the confidence that they need to be empowered to actually do the things they want to do well as I said again the most fundamental aspect of human existence is shelter and I think that once we pay very close attention to solving the problems of shelter I think everything else which was all of our other problems with regards to social systems and education and the rest will all fall into place and one thing that of course and I'll come back to your question again but just to talk about Amman Design Week as a Jordanian ecosystem Amman Design Week is essentially a learning platform that aims to raise awareness about the importance of design in our daily life with the underlying mission to foster human thinking and collaboration in Jordan so what we essentially do is create various programs throughout the year that culminate an attendee kind of event and these programs basically include things like community outreach programs student programs we do exhibitions we work with designers, crafts people so there's a really a variety of programs that transmit skills but also puts together different stakeholders so we work with the government and we work with the private sector and we work with different people and put them all together to engage in a conversation in order to move forward and kind of propel the momentum in advance where we are today and going back to shelter again in 2010 it was about the product and it was about how do I get the product out on the market but then as I continued through this process I realized that it wasn't or I shouldn't be looking and one shouldn't be looking at shelter as a product because it's a bit more complex than that but more of like an instrument of change which means that you really need to integrate the community into the shelter building process and ownership and a sense of agency and make them really engage within the built environment I want to bring Reem in here on that sense of community because that's something that you've worked a lot on in your research hasn't you? Yeah so the way we look at it it's really about the process it's again when we're talking about an inclusive economy it's not just inclusive in terms of beneficiaries it's also participatory in its essence so thinking about all the stakeholders as producers and beneficiaries of the impact and there's no shame in saying also the commercialization of the tent I mean we are so scared of talking impact and profit there's no shame in profit we sometimes we hear a lot of companies still talking about corporate social responsibility and again when we look at the fact that the base of the pyramid is a 5 trillion dollar market why are we talking responsibility and we're not talking opportunity why are we still addressing the issues without engaging everyone in the conversation and aligning their economic and social interests and I think that we have many examples of that Talk to me a little bit Kaushal about what the government's done right in Jordan in terms of supporting you that other governments can learn from supporting all the time they have the GIP program which is a graduate internship program they have many programs along the way I see many institutions helping with the training soft scales there's always something going on something new coming up and the university keep churning fresh graduates which are quite ready the raw talent is very powerful feel free to jump in here Mohamed because essentially you guys are in San Francisco and in Jordan as well you're looking for Jordanian talent what is it about the Jordanian talent itself whether it be the education system the raw skills are there the nice thing about what we're doing is that we're working on algorithms and IPs and it's also new for companies outside and for people outside Jordan so it's more of people who have the mindset to problem solving and building these algorithms and technologies the thing is that because we're from Amman and we're from Jordan in specific we believe that our engineering capacity can compete with different other companies out there and this is by far what we heard from companies like Microsoft or Autodesk who are we're proudly competing with them the thing we did we built something called Hackatari from hacking an Atari so Hackatari is our program within universities so we go in with universities we work with the students, with deans with professors we work on things that can actually support in what we're doing and can support these students so actually we built a new syllabus that can be implemented within these universities and currently we have access to more than 5000 students the thing that I found is that one very interesting story is one of our brightest engineers actually used to work in a bakery so you can imagine that there's so much talent in Jordan the thing is that you need to source that and what we noticed is that we're actually competing with the talent in San Francisco and in the US they're not better than us in anything it's much more about the mindset, the way you do the problem solving problem solving is something universal if you guide these guys and everybody who's working with you through proper problem solving techniques then you're going to be able to do this proudly now we have 16 patents under our company and it was all developed through Jordanians and through my co-founder as well applause I'd love to bring him on in here I wanted to add a quick example obviously very early in our experience working with the Jordanian government but I'll give you a very tangible example when I talked to people here one of my concerns was that it's hard to hire for Expedia I tried to explain how we hire, how we come into a country how we like to immerse new employees into the Expedia culture and the technology we really want them to understand the core platforms and I said well we need a recruiter who's really really good and it's going to take a while for us to hire a recruiter you will be shocked to hear that not only did the government help us bring a recruiter but she was perfect in fact to the point that we have now hired her and she's part of our team because we don't want her to help our competitors so it's an example that Expedia has gone to 60 countries in the world and opened offices we've never had support like that it is so tangible the support that you can really come with anything you need and on the talent I'll extend your idea one of the senior engineers working to build the office in Jordan he's a concert level pianist he turned he taught himself how to write code and the first thing he told me when he called me from Jordan he said I'm on the people here are hungry and that is something that I learned over the last 20 years we can teach people how to write code hunger is within people and if the youth of Jordan have it then I could easily see Expedia and many many other companies have very large offices here and truly just have amazing jobs and software one of the challenges of course is funding what's the picture like in Jordan today and regionally in terms of these start-ups I think it's it's challenging but it's challenging everywhere that's more of a reflection I think of the still kind of the early embryonic stage of the ecosystem than anything so it's not a mistake that the people who backed us at the very early stage were all successful entrepreneurs Mr. Fahdi who founded Aramax Mr. Ali Al-Husari who's built Hekma Pharmaceuticals these are the people and Dr. Zawmi of course these are the people who took early stage risk with us until we have more exits I think in the region more people who've independently built I guess a portfolio and people who can offer also guidance we won't see a lot of the late stage kind of development that you see elsewhere how do you create that type of environment because right now in the Middle East especially because of the lower oil prices we've seen two years of slower growth the private sector has really taken a hit there how do you create a sustainable level of funding yeah I think it's incumbent upon the private sector to be a little bit more active than it is today we need to be more competitive in Jordan as a private sector it's very easy to entreat the public sector and government to do lots of things for us but we have to also commit to training staff I was very very excited to hear that Expedia is coming I mean here's a company which is a global company investing in local talent those people will likely go on eventually after hopefully they've produced for Expedia will likely go on and develop companies themselves but it's an ecosystem approach it does take time there's no panacea or silver bullet what are some of the things that they could take elsewhere and do something similar to what Jordan has done in terms of not just education but also in terms of enabling these companies to come into Jordan and really create the jobs that are needed across the region so desperately Mohana do you want to kick off I think mostly one of the things that we should focus on is the ecosystem itself one major thing I wanted to add on the investment thing we don't have in the region much more investors who can actually do commercialization of technology most of the investors are focused on services and e-commerce this is changing now we're seeing investors are actually being indicated by other investors outside and other investors are actually looking at Jordan so part of what we're doing with mixed dimensions is that we attracted Chinese and US investors when these investors came in and joined the board, joined the company we noticed the difference in our vision, in our growth and the way we look at the technology itself we believe that for mixed dimensions and other companies that already went into San Francisco and came back as well this knowledge can be spread among everybody and this could actually attract companies to come into Jordan because when you hear about companies who got investment from the hardest place to get investment in San Francisco they will come in, they will see what you're doing and they're okay, if you guys can do this then the talent here is ready for these companies to come in so it's more about the ecosystem and the mindset I always focus on the mindset itself and how to build people, the youth government and everybody around that mindset to attract these investors to come in can I also add from our approach the reasons are very very compelling it's a big market but it has to be approached in a federated way it would be so encouraging if we could begin to say that Jordan and other regional partners are working together to allow us access across each country and I think you're beginning to see some of those activities occur at leadership level across the board but Jordan is really a great place to kind of project into the rest of the region from so most of our staff is based here, we have an office in the UAE but it's small, we really serve as a public speaking environment or the market out of Jordan I mean if you want to weigh in here because of the research that you've done and what you've seen really at the grassroots level in terms of what it takes to get people involved in terms of the creative level but not just that, how they grow as entrepreneurs so we look at when we're talking about the future economy and the inclusive economy it's also about future models and the exponential organization so we're talking about scaling the impact and not necessarily just growing the company itself and there are fascinating frameworks that we're seeing and that we're actually using in Jordan and in Saudi and it's something called collective impact and again this is about the sharing economies, how can we leverage the existing resources the existing infrastructure, the existing networks and organize ourselves in a way where we don't, we stop working in silos but everyone collectively works towards a common goal and an impact but again the collective impact framework requires a very small team for this centralized infrastructure it's a part-spattery approach it's structured, it's data-driven, it leverages technology but it requires a team of 6 to 10 people to create change at a national scale again, we're not just talking about the way we look at social innovation is innovating even in the way we implement these innovations, so how can we be extremely competitive, extremely lean with exponential impact and exponential profit and happy to say that we are using this to advance social innovation here in Jordan and also we're working on it in Saudi I'd like to add to that discussion by saying that I think it's really about the values that Jordan is projecting to the world I mean we're in the middle of political unrest and we're grappling with social responsibility and I think what characterizes the heart of Jordan is the fact that it's welcomed so many different communities and even when we were doing our research for Amman Design Week we were trying to understand what local design was and the conclusion that we came up with was that our locality is in our diversity and this is something that we really need to embrace so I think that's a very important value that Jordan carries and that really speaks to the global world on many different levels it's the perfect place to be to have social experiments it's literally the perfect spot to do the social experiments what about scaling these businesses, these startups and not just the funding scaling the businesses what are the challenges there and how can the governments and the private sector actually work with these entrepreneurs to grow the businesses, create the jobs it depends it depends on what's your target if your target is regional then you have to structure your business towards doing that and scaling it up if your target is global then this is a totally different story one of the things that I always advise so I'm privileged to be mentoring some young entrepreneurs when we got our first advisor we got him through Facebook so we sent him a message, told him could you be our advisor because we don't know how to sell our product so he just after 5 minutes he just sent me, ok just come back when San Francisco come and tell me what you're doing and I'm gonna help you do that so scalability depends on the market that you're going after and most importantly is that entrepreneurs should actually learn from others they should learn from their fellow entrepreneurs and there's something very very interesting happening in Jordan most of the entrepreneurs they know each other so we're always grouping whenever there's a term sheet going for one of our entrepreneurs it gets circulated among everyone else so that we can actually see if this is good or not, don't do this add this term if you want so this thing is actually building up on what we're doing so it depends mostly the advice depends on the market and where you're going and what's your product market fit I think in Jordan's perspective scaling a business has two aspects it's scaling your business and the revenue and scaling it to create employment and that's what I think we can do very easily out here and I've proved that model it has worked so far in the last 15 years and so how do you create the raw talent is there every company can easily train companies like Expedia when you're coming in you're going to train so many more people and you will see it's easier to do all we need to do is get more companies interested to come into Jordan and set up base here and then create that employment in numbers because this is the only industry which can give employment in numbers and can sort of take care of the youth unemployment for us actually I agree when we think of scale we think of two components to it one is the product and then the other is the distribution and so in analogy you know penicillin is a product antibiotic you can take it orally you can take it intravenously the way you take it matters for us we've built a product we really rely on our partners in government and elsewhere to help us with the distribution and so the long term work of building bilateral trade agreements of rationalizing regulatory regimes whatever it is that helps us scale even as we invest our internal resources for scale I do want to add to the idea of having foreign companies come in because I think very rightly the entrepreneurs locally must look at the market in the region but for an Expedia I think what we're looking for is talent and if Jordan has plenty of talent we have the scale globally anyway and the way global companies are structured we build for the world and I think in a way what that allows us to do is to sort of get around this question of scaling the market because if you produce the talent then that talent is going to go out and do other things and then the market and everything else grows with it we're running out of time but I just wanted to go down the panelists and ask them what's your one hope for the future given all the things that we've heard today given the progress that Jordan itself has made in terms of creating this ecosystem for entrepreneurs I will start with Ahmed so we have very positive vision in the country it's inclusive it's progressive it's positive I think education so my wife works at the Queen Narnia Foundation actually and so I hear a lot about how much the country is investing in education but when you think about the workforce of today of the future that's kind of the only place I think that one can invest I think we have to play the long game and I think Jordan is playing the long game already so we need to keep on at it and get the results his majesty's vision has been there since a long time since I've come here it has been there and it's progressing in the right direction and we just have to play the long game I think for me it's to see different types of collaborations happening and you know as the architect Hassan Fethi once said it takes one month to build the house but ten to build an entire village and I think that with different people from different backgrounds and different sectors kind of join forces then that creates a very positive movement towards change and reform for me I would like to get back the maker movement back into Jordan so we're known for being makers on our lives through our ancestors now with technology we can actually build that we can build on top of that with 3D printing with IoT Jordan could actually become that hub for innovation and for entrepreneurship we're moving into that direction and I'm hoping to see that very soon it is there I'm excited about the outcomes there's so many entrepreneurs out there I'm loving it I'm hopeful that we will be launching a collective impact towards advancing social innovation for inclusive economy in Jordan by the end of the year so I'm hoping that you'll all join our movement I was going to say that I hope for 250 engineers that Expedia has here but if you're going to ask me what is the one thing I'm hopeful for then I'm going to tell you a personal story my father was a refugee he and his family moved from Pakistan into India when India and Pakistan were partitioned so if you want my one hope for the world then it's going to be peace fantastic as you can see an incredible group of people working to make things better not just in Jordan but in the region itself giving a lot of hope to us as we continue these conversations here at the World Economic Forum I'd like to thank the panelists and our audience His Majesty thank you so much for joining us this morning