 All right, we're going to get started. Thank you all for coming. This is a really new, innovative model for Davos. This is a unique format where we're bringing Davos to the world and the world to Davos. The idea is we have several people who are based around the world and four cities around the world. And all four of these people have carried out workshops in their cities. And they're going to be bringing us some of their results. So it's really a way you can sometimes feel like you're up here in the top of the Magic Mountain and you're talking about things but maybe slightly disconnected from the rest of the world. But the idea today is really to connect and to have a bit more impact and to really scale this up. So in this panel, we want to explore new approaches, innovative models. We want to support young entrepreneurs in their various cities, help with job creation, explore the roles of various stakeholders, and make a real connection with some of these people. So I'd like to first introduce my fellow panelists here in the flesh. First is next to me is Fahad Al Rashid, who is the CEO of the group CEO of the King Abdullah Economic City in Saudi Arabia and a fellow young global leader. You can read more about him in his bio. And then here is Christian Albrick, who is the global CEO of JLL, which is obviously the global property company. So what we're going to do now, first, is I'm going to explain the overall topic. And then we're going to hear a little bit from our panelists. As you can see them up on the screen behind me, the density and diversity of cities fosters collaborative creativity that has produced some of humanity's best ideas throughout history. How can we further enable cities as platforms for innovation? So that's the topic we want to address here today. Before we begin doing all of that, I'd like to call on the representatives from these Shaper hubs around the world. So we have four cities, and I'm going to try and get them right. On the left is Belfast. And I was just informed, actually, right behind our friend in Belfast is the place where the Titanic was launched. So that's the runway for the Titanic. So very auspicious innovation and all that. And on the our right, her left, is the place where Game of Thrones is filmed, actually. Next we have, I believe, next is Seattle. And then next is Quito. And on the end, we have Vancouver. So what I'd like each of the representatives in each of the Shaper hubs to do is just very briefly introduce yourselves. 30 seconds, not the full extended biography. And then also just give us a very quick sentence that describes the pre-activity that you've been running in your city. So maybe we'll start with Belfast, please. Hi, I'm Shari Attison, and I'm from Belfast. Our pre-work involved a content creation event on Monday, which brought together global and local leaders to discuss the knowledge economy in Belfast, what we're currently doing, and what we're aspiring to do. We really wanted to come together and show the next generation the different technical and creative careers that will be available to them in the near future. We also heard from some amazing local startups that are doing some fantastic things here, and really how Belfast has helped them flourish with the economy that we have here. And we finished off with a fantastic interactive panel, with again, some local and local leaders, and then brought it out to the audience, because we really wanted to see what the people of Belfast wanted to hear. Great, thank you. And now we're going to go to Seattle. Hi, I'm Martina Welcoff in Seattle, Washington. And last week, we brought together leaders from the city government, private Washington Technology Industry Association, and tech entrepreneurs to discuss how our region is doing in terms of inclusivity and the people who are benefiting from the technology boom that's happening here. We talked about it both in terms of the progress that's been made and the programs that are in place in order to make the region more inclusive, and also in terms of the gaps we have to fill, and the work that remains in terms of improving those numbers. Great, thank you. You're keeping to time, and the technology is all working, which I love. Always a good sign. Kita, could you? Yes, good morning. This is Nicole Galinda from the Kita Hub. I am coordinator of civil participation here in the municipality. This Monday, we launched an activity which basically was the launching of a map of innovation that we are implementing in the platform of the global shapers having Kita. It would basically bring together local innovators and entrepreneurs to showcase their initiatives, but more importantly, to map their interactions to eventually produce data and eventually also share this experience with other hubs in the world. Great, and last but not least, Vancouver. I'm Saif Borger, representing Vancouver, Canada. So last week, we hosted a cross sector panel discussion with leaders across academia, industry, and government on how Vancouver, and by extension cities around the world can continue to leverage the sheer densities of cities to drive innovation and collaborative creativity. Great, now I just want to direct a small message to panelists in these four cities. We're going to, during this session, we'll have a bit of discussion between the panelists and what we'd ideally like is the discussion to involve you. We'll also involve the audience, but we'd also like you guys to get involved. So rather than you all talking over each other, if you could just raise your hand when you'd like to speak. I know it sounds a little bit like we're in class, but I think that just makes it much easier. Then I'll be able to call on you as we go along. And we're not afraid of any sort of disagreement. And in fact, as a journalist, I much prefer when people disagree with each other, but it's terrible if you're all talking over each other like Fox News or something. So let's keep it respectful and just put up your hand when you need to, when you'd like to say something. Okay, and I'll promise to keep an eye on you. I can see you up there in the sky. Now I'd also like the rest of the world to invite the rest of the world to get involved and engage in this discussion through social media. We have a hashtag, it's hashtag shaping Davos. And it'd be wonderful if everyone watching this around the world could also get involved and send us your thoughts, your messages, your questions. I have an iPad here, which I'll be using to read some of those and to interact even more. So we're talking really world to Davos, Davos to the world. First of all, for our panelists, I might start with you for hard and ask you to just let us know what you're doing in Saudi Arabia and with the King Abdullah city to create an innovative and an entrepreneurial environment. Thank you, Jameel. Well, it's good to remember why we built cities in the first place. We built cities because when we come together, we do more, economies of scale and services. Also, it's more affordable to get services in cities because we live there. But also, we built cities because of innovation. When people get together, they innovate. And I have learned over the past 10 years that cities are the most competitive space in the world. There are 247,000 cities, each offering a unique product, trying to attract you and your capital. So they're trying to attract human capital, as well as capital. And I have realized very difficult to compete in this world. The only way to do it is to create a place where people and companies can unleash their potential. And this means that cities have to be inclusive of, you have to be able to attract all kinds, a big range of, the widest range of people from all around the world and from all backgrounds, but also means that you have to focus a lot on education. And so in CAKE, not only do we offer housing for all income levels to make sure that everybody living in the city can participate in the economic cycle, and we ensure that every community has all its needs to bring people together. But also, we are focusing in a big way on education, ensuring that design-based thinking starts really at the K through 12 level and goes all the way to college. And in college, we launched a project with Babson to build a new entrepreneurship and business school called the Prince Mohammed bin Salman College for Business and Entrepreneurship in collaboration with MISC and Babson, as I said. And the whole role of this college is to ensure that we have a lot of entrepreneurs that can come to CAKE and set up their businesses because entrepreneurship ultimately drives innovation. Great, when you say, just to follow up, when you say that you provide housing for all income levels, so you have subsidies and you make sure that those people are living in proximity or you have areas, how do you do that? No, it's a very good question because typically cities get into the trap of success. The most successful cities are cities like London and New York and Hong Kong that have an incredible value proposition for a visitor, but they are incredibly expensive and they're providing services and tourism and guess what, tourism is a low income industry for those working in it. So what happens is that people start moving out and commuting in and out to do these jobs. So we actually looked at our job profile for the next 20 years. We figured out exactly what jobs we will have and then we designed the city to, to cater to every income level. As such, we don't have an issue with land prices, for example, being too high, therefore we can do affordable housing. We can actually do affordable housing and earn eight to 10% margins on these units and therefore it's sustainable and we want to do it. And we're building 5,000 units and affordable as we speak. That's because you've built a new city in the desert, right? Like a brand new... By the way, on the Red Sea. And I tell you about the Red Sea when you come, Jimmy, because I'm going to bring you there, 6,000 marine species on the Red Sea. Wonderful. And you have to protect that kind of. 44 are sharks, but I won't tell you on your screen. Love sharks. So that's for a city, I mean, that sounds incredible, but that's a city that you're building almost, you know, basically from scratch. Maybe I could ask our Shaper Hub people to answer the same sort of question. I know you're all sort of dealing with innovation and entrepreneurial and how have you, what were some of the ideas that you came up with in your sessions and your daily, your day long project hearing things? Maybe start with Belfast. Obviously it's a bit different when you're dealing with a city that's got hundreds, sometimes thousands of years of history. Yeah, so we are used to joining the world together with our iconic ships and aerospace, but now we're doing it digitally. We created so many new jobs, almost 40,000 for the knowledge economy and 6,000 of those are in R&D. You can't progress without giving large companies and small companies space to really push the boundaries and not just do the day-to-day. Alongside that, in order to make our knowledge economy jobs really more appealing to the younger generation and the millennials, they are 1.5 higher wages than the normal. So that's say around 20,000 to about 22,000. And one in 11 of us are hired by the knowledge economy directly or indirectly, which is around 76,000 of us, which is a huge stack in Belfast. And in order to keep those people interested, we have really been promoting this actively through our city councils, through the government. And we're also very well aware that we won't just reach people through universities and PhDs, we need to reach people that might be from a different lifestyle. That means providing more apprenticeships through large companies. I'm really going through further education colleges to reach the people that might not be financially stable to say spend 3,000 pounds a year going to university or again having a PhD. Further to note on that, we are actively trying to increase the number of PhDs that we have and we have a strategy in place at the minute that will hopefully put that on the increase. We currently have around 99 million dedicated to research and grant contracts. And we have absolutely fantastic research going on at our local universities, one which is the Queen's University Belfast, which is a worldwide reputation and the University of Ulster, which is in the top 100 universities in the world. What about, maybe I'll ask all four of you, what about this idea of housing? Because you see in big cities like London, the ones we mentioned, London, Hong Kong, New York, you see maybe older areas, older neighborhoods getting gentrified and then they become ghettos of prosperity where everyone's a banker and really boring places actually. And the barista and the hipsters, they can't afford to live there anymore and they move on to somewhere else. I mean, did any of you, maybe I'll ask all four of you, raise your hand if you did. If you didn't, we'll carry on. Did you discuss this idea of how to make sure that you have mixed communities where you have more exciting, you know, many different income levels living in proximity? Maybe we'll ask Seattle since Belfast, you already just spoke, but we'll come back to you on that. Seattle, maybe. So housing has been a huge issue in Seattle, particularly in recent years. And unfortunately, our levels of homelessness have reached a point where they've actually been declared a crisis. And there are now many programs surfacing to address both the crisis itself, but also longer term sustainable plans to address affordable housing. And one of the innovative solutions that come up is some unique building incentives for commercial developers. So there's now some incentives to develop affordable housing within large new residential buildings going up so that there is that mix happening within communities. It's not separating out different neighborhoods and, you know, relegating affordable housing to certain parts of the city, but really making an effort to integrate that housing and make more affordable units available throughout the city regardless of which neighborhood and becoming easier for the people seeking those affordable units to find a job within reasonable commute. And I lived in China, I lived in Beijing and they tried this for a while as well in Beijing where they tell commercial real estate developers, oh, if you want to build those beautiful villa houses, you also have to have some low income housing. I want to get Christian's view on this because in your experience as a commercial developer all over the world, does this work? Is this something that's effective? Does this attract you when you're thinking about where you're going to put your next development? Well, I think it is incredibly important that you have a good mix in a city that makes cities really attractive and what you were touching on when something becomes too one-sided and clearly London is one of the examples where they are at risk that they're getting too one-sided especially in the southwest of London, then, you know, it's getting boring and that's why the east of London has become so popular over the last couple of years and this is a trend which is true all over the place and so local municipalities have to find a way to keep that mix, which is really, really difficult because at some point somebody has to sacrifice because the owners of properties in these areas where you want to keep that mix which means you can only go for lower rental income and you have to put a cap on it, you know, they are the ones who are sacrificing for the benefit of the overall city so it's a difficult balance. I think infrastructure can help a lot because if you have the ability to kind of widen the commuter region in a way that you have really fast connections, that helps obviously to increase the overall territory of a city and that will then in itself create other vibrant places but there needs to be that connection. Sure. Thank you for mentioning the M word. If you want to destroy innovation and to do some municipality, basically and this might be shocking but the reality is it might be, you might be able to start a business so quickly in some places but in the name of health and safety they almost stop you from doing anything that's innovative and we struggle with this and I see the struggle everywhere in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. It's so difficult to get through municipalities. Municipalities have the most work to do on attracting talent and making sure it's easy for them to start. Maybe we can go to Keto, yeah. Could you tell us about your thoughts? Yes, thank you. I have to disagree a little bit in terms of municipality stop-beat innovation. I know it is hard for municipalities to get along the way and be very innovative in terms of letting people interact and have their own projects. However, in terms of Keto, for example, last year we started this program called Keto Vision to 2040 which is basically to gather together the program public sector academia and more importantly citizens to actually discuss but what are the issues that we want to address in order to live in the city and we envision by 2040 in terms of transportation, urbanization, and making of Keto an inclusive city. So I think it is the responsibility of municipalities to start the debate and try to go in the same way in the same time that innovations are taking place. But yeah, we're actually doing that in Keto at least and with our local activity we discovered that Keto is a city that innovates and there's an increasing need for entrepreneurs and local innovators to know what the others are doing and sort of also showcase the areas of expertise that more importantly map these interactions and the event launch that we had demonstrated that innovators actually want this map that we are going to implement in order to know what the others are doing and how to get along and improve the quality of life of citizens. Great, thank you. Vancouver, what would you do if anything you'd like to add into this? I basically agree with what has been said. I mean, it all comes down to a collaboration between local governments, whether that's municipalities and we're talking society, we're talking private sector. Vancouver is a success story when it comes to a green economy. It has been ranked most sustainable city in North America and has consistently been rated as one of the world's most livable cities. The city of Vancouver developed an action plan to make Vancouver the greenest city in the world by 2020. So the green economy in Vancouver includes mainly seven sub sectors. These are local food, green building design and construction, clean technology, alternative energy and green building products, green infrastructure, sustainability services and education, land and water remediation, environmental consulting and materials management and recycling. So I guess it again all comes down to having that strong society that has a strong collaboration between all parts and all components of the city. Can I push you a little bit though on house prices, which I know everyone in the world cares a lot about. Vancouver's an extremely expensive place to buy a house and you've seen people in Vancouver, I spent a bit of time there and you've seen people having to move further and further away from the central city and the particular problem that you've had in Vancouver to my mind is you've got people from other parts of the world who are buying houses, sometimes even leaving them empty and that's a particular problem for people from Hong Kong and China who have viewed it for a long time as a safe place to put money. What is from what you discussed or what you know about your city, how are they trying to address that issue? Because that's also an issue in London, it's an issue in many places, particularly London, where people from wealthy people from other places will buy a place, they'll leave it empty. Some parts of Mayfair you can go through and some of your countrymen are responsible for this. Some of the people in my part of the world. You can go through and it's all dark at night in some seasons. But so how are they people dealing with that? Vancouver has a huge real estate crisis. But the local government is trying to minimize the damage and keep that real estate bubble from bursting. Earlier in 2016, they started new measures like, like I said, a new foreign buyers tax additional 15% to keep the prices of real estate from growing at the same pace it has been growing for the past few years. So, yeah, I guess it comes down to collaboration again. If the local government gives you all the legal framework that you need to protect the real estate scene, and that cannot be actually working without having all components of society contributing to that. And that brings us again to the green city in the world by 2020 and how all of the green building products and the green building design and construction, that component in the action plan is very important. And yeah, I guess the local government is working on multiple actions here to limit the damage. OK, Christian, I'll give you a direct question. Could you explain how you think we can build a city that's both efficient and productive? That's a big question. And then probably there are different ways to come to a solution. But I probably would give you five headlines. And it's the governance. And then we need smart cities. We need talent. We need physical infrastructure. And we need digital infrastructure. And what that means is around the governance, cities have been growing tremendously in some areas of the world. And so we need the ability to kind of move the borders out that the municipality has the ability to deal with that territory, which was originally around the city and which is now part of the city. And we have great examples where this is working well if you think about Auckland or even London where they have rearranged the municipality. And we have other examples where they are struggling with that when you think about Mumbai. And for all of us who have been in Mumbai, you can see where the municipality is ending. And another one is starting. Sometimes great roads are stopping. And you are on a dirtway. And then a couple of kilometres further down, you are on a great road again. And that is part of what I would call under the headline governance, the ability of the municipality to deal with that territory. Smart cities, obviously, we need to have data. We need to understand what is going on in the city. So you need to have sensors. You need to follow the traffic. You have all kinds of information which will help you to make a city productive and efficient. And the technology is around. And it's easier for Fai to bring that into his newly built city than into an existing city. But you can do it. And it's a worthwhile investment. If we think about talent, I think that was already mentioned very much. So we need that mix of universities, businesses, and public authorities who can then create the environment which is inspiring and which drives modernization, which drives new ideas. And so it's no surprise that a lot of the most successful cities are kind of around really top universities. And when we think about the Silicon Valley, the Silicon Valley is no city. But you have great universities there. And it's a brilliant ecosystem that the whole world is now thinking on talking about the Silicon Valley as if it were to be a city, but it's not. And then, obviously, the whole infrastructure question, which I divided up between physical infrastructure and digital infrastructure. On the physical infrastructure, although that almost seems old style, but at the end of the day, if you don't have great infrastructure, a city cannot be successful. And again, you can use India as an example. How hilarious it is if you land in Delhi and then you want to get into the city. I mean, you can be in a traffic jam for two hours. And this is doable. And it's doable for existing cities as it is for emerging cities. But what Dubai has done, they have put themselves on the map because of a great infrastructure. Beijing, Shanghai, I mean, the airports, they are fantastic, the public transportation fantastic. But if you look at London, I mean, London has kind of they are getting really their act together. And if Crossrail will be finished, that will be a completely new experience around public infrastructure. And so, frankly, I'm an infrastructure junkie. If a city doesn't provide great infrastructure, it will never be my place because I don't want to waste my life in a traffic jam or in waiting for the tube. And finally, it's the digital infrastructure. And the digital infrastructure has opened up places to become really, really successful who are not really in the center of the attentional who are, frankly, in the middle of nowhere. And I would like to use Salt Lake City as an example who have built an absolutely top high speed fiber internet availability. And that enables now people to live in Salt Lake City, to be connected to the world and to have that ability. And this digital infrastructure is probably going forward a real key thing to be successful and to be efficient and productive. Great. Would anyone like to add any other things that we think are essential for an innovative city? Does anyone else have just another idea or two? Why don't we go to Belfast? Anything else you discuss that you think is also critical to creating an innovative city? Yeah, so from our content creation session, which filled out the biggest TV studio in Ireland, we had a panelist called Sean Cullen. And he's really dedicated in his startup, which is to take on use spaces in Belfast city center and bring them into low cost accommodation for people. So to really foster people staying in Belfast and bringing people into Belfast, as well as our starter housing here is in around $200,000, which is fantastic. And it really helps keep people in this country and give them the opportunities that enable us to be at the forefront of the UK and globally. And did I see Keto? Was there a yet another thing that you think is really important for fostering innovation? Is there? Yes, thank you. I totally agree with what Christian mentioned. And I think it is very, very important to coming from the municipality to open up the debate for the citizens to actually discuss what they want to implement in their cities, how they plan on solving issues, pressing issues regarding traffic, for example, or housing. Keto is implementing a platform called LINK, which is a platform that basically allows for the citizens to use digital platforms to actually comment on how they propose solutions for their own problems. We sometimes, as public officers, we tend to think we have all the answers. But actually, no, we just need to open up the space so that people on their own citizens, coming from various and described public sector academia, how they propose these solutions and our role as public officers is to listen to them and see how viable they are. But most importantly, I think it is the need to listen to what people have to say. I think you made an extremely important point, which the idea that governments, municipalities, the M-Word, they have to be responsive. And they have to listen to people. And people have to have a way to be able to interact with the people governing them and deciding cities. I'll give you a specific example. I lived in Beijing. And obviously, Beijing is not in a country with democracy. And it's hard, actually, as a citizen, to find the entity that you need to talk to to get a stop sign put in or a traffic light put in. And I used to think, I used to drive home and right outside where I turned into where I live, there should definitely have been a stop sign. And there should have been a stop sign for the 10 years that I lived in that place. But I tried once to find, who do I talk to to ask about whether they could put in a stop sign? I couldn't find it. And as a result, I think some of the planning in Beijing is removed from the feedback from people. I mean, what about how important, I don't want to get you in trouble, Christian, but how important do you think this is, this idea that the citizenry can also have a say in the way that the city is put together? I mean, how crucial is that, do you think? Well, obviously, all the systems carry advantages and disadvantages with regards to creating a city. A less democratic environment obviously empowers you to move fast and going back to Beijing or Shanghai. I mean, what they have done in a very short period of time was absolutely amazing, what I've never been able to be realized in a more democratic... Couldn't be done in India, for example, yeah. Sure. And so, you know, it depends a little bit what you ask for and what you want to try to solve for. If you have a lot of public interaction and you ask the citizens before, how do you want that to be created? You can do that. And you know, a lot of European countries are experimenting around that. And my home country, Germany, is now doing it all over the place when they want to start a major project. Well, it takes years. And so far, the outcome is that you have people who are in favor at the beginning of that project and you have people who are in disagreement at the beginning of the project. They've changed their mind by the time it's getting clear. Well, I don't know whether they really changed their mind because we have great examples where, you know, it's, you know, people have different views and they tend to be selfish. So at the end of the day, I would... Oh, it's Heathrow. Yeah, well, Heathrow is a great example. I mean, there's no doubt that Heathrow needs to be expanded. Now, the big question is, is an airport ruled by the city next to the airport? Or is an airport something which is a task which is by the country? Or in the case of Heathrow, and I know the Brits will hate if they say that, I mean, this is the most important airport for Europe. I mean, you could almost argue this should be... For a couple of months, yeah. But you could almost argue that should be a European decision. We need that hub if we want to stay competitive. And so you should certainly not decide on a Heathrow airport by just Londoners. I know they have to take the burden, but they also take the benefit. It's a very good point because I've also spent a little bit of time in Taiwan. And in Taiwan, even people who live in that city, they lament the fact that it's too democratic, that one old grandmother who likes a very old apartment can block an entire block of development. So you actually go to Taiwan and it's a very nice place and it's great food, but there's some really old buildings that are right in the middle of town that should have probably... And they're not good quality or historic buildings. They're just there because they can't... The democratic process has not allowed that development to happen. Being a reasonable guy like you are for hard, I'm sure you've thought about how to blend this idea of top-down decision-making with some responsiveness from... So how do you do it in the place that you run? The city that you control? Yeah, we talk about governance a lot actually because I don't see my job as a political job. My job is an executive role and my job is to make sure that the streets are clean, that the city is secure, that people have opportunity to do what they want. So if they want to start a career, they can, if they want to go to school, they can. That is my job, that's such an executive job. And therefore we have actually separated the role of the developer, which is the top-down, identifying the future, building, et cetera, for it from the actual operation. And we've created a different platform called city management, whereby everybody that owns in the city can actually vote on a board that will select a city manager to run the city. And that's very important because you need to be able to fire whoever is running the city as citizens. It must be, it cannot be over a cycle of four years. It has to be immediate. They're doing a bad job. They have to be out. And that is something that we believe is something that's going to be very important to the city. We did the same in terms of apps. My view as a city developer is, listen, we pay everybody to do their job, everybody to clean their streets, everybody to maintain them. What doesn't happen because of lack of accountability. So the easiest thing for us to do is to give every citizen in the city an app that allows them to run the city and to tell us what's not working and where somebody's not doing their job. So we find that that would increase accountability as well as the performance of the city. Now, I promised before this, I was going to ask you a sensitive question and now I'm going to ask it. Will your city have driverless cars before women are allowed to drive in your country? This is a closed session, right? There's nobody out there. No, it's broadcast in the world. No, I'll answer it in the most sincere way that I can. I have a seven-year-old daughter. She's a very strong young lady, I would say. And she better be able to drive by 18. Nice, nice way to, yeah. So maybe I know that gender equality was something that you were talking about in Seattle. Can you tell us maybe what solutions or what ideas you came up with to improve gender equality? In your specific city. Yeah, yeah, so our discussion sort of fell into two primary thematic buckets and the first being programs. There's a lot of incredible programs that are being implemented in Seattle, such as the Washington Technology Industry Association has a program called Apprentee, which is an apprenticeship program focused on women, minorities and veterans. And it's been very successful in training and placing people from those groups in tech jobs in order to help close the gap that currently exists in terms of the representation numbers for all of those groups are very underrepresented in tech currently. And there's other great programs that private companies are running, such as Perkins Cooey. It's a law firm that has a lead-better initiative that provides reduced cost legal services to women entrepreneurs, as well as mentorship and educational programs. So there are resources available for women and other underrepresented groups, both in terms of educational opportunities and job placement and workforce development. The other thematic bucket we discussed was more ideological and thinking about hiring practices and workplace culture and whether or not the current system was conducive to including women and other underrepresented groups and everything from the language in a job description and how gendered that language is. There's an amazing local company called Textio that does textual analysis, very data-driven on gender bias in text. And so you can actually analyze a job listing and see if it's skewed to a male applicant or female applicant or a variety of other factors. And you can take a very data-driven lens at that problem, as well as workplace culture. There's another local company called LeaveLogic that's focused on making parental leave more transparent and accessible to employees so that it's easier for employees, whether they're women or men, to plan for those major life events and to plan for becoming parents, which is a huge factor oftentimes in women leaving the workforce. And so I think it needs to be a combination of programs to address the talent pipeline and bring more people into the technology industry and then also examining the biases that exist and thinking about the ways we can adapt the system such that it's a more inclusive environment holistically. Great. We've heard some really interesting ideas and part of the problem, I think, we find is that these ideas that we come up with in our individual cities are often not, how do we, they're very specific to the place and the problem that they're addressing. So how do we take some of the best ideas and replicate them and scale them to different parts of the world? I'm thinking in particular cities that really need to be rejuvenated, cities like Detroit or some of the sort of destroyed cities that were once great and are now sort of fallen into disrepair. How do we, I mean, this is the next part of the session, how do we scale and how do we replicate these ideas? Maybe I'll start with you, Fahad. No, I think this is a very complex question because like you said, every city has its own. Climate, different. And fiscal policies and politics, et cetera. So it's very difficult to, but we can generalize on one thing, which is education. And I go back to this idea because I really think that education is the most important part of the innovative mindset. Unfortunately, many countries around the world, they don't teach innovation in school. It's very simple, they just don't. You can't even argue. You have to raise your hand, you know, it's like in order to achieve order, we suffocate innovation. Like you just suffocate. Like me, like me, yeah, yeah. And therefore. I was educated in traditional ways. Where? New Zealand. And the Middle East, actually. Karen. So I think that there's something that has to be taken very seriously. I give you an example. In our school, we did for 10th grader, a program on entrepreneurship. It's just two weeks. You know, 20 students get into groups, come up with an idea, you'll pitch it, and then you will see whether you get funding or not. And it took just two weeks. Before the program started, we asked them, out of the 20, how many want to be an entrepreneur? One, raise your hand. After, 15, out of the 20. So sometimes you just introduce this can-do attitude. You allow us to, you know, get into a design lab and actually produce something. And this idea that actually manifests my brain, my wavelength into something physical, changes the way a child thinks about their future and what they can do in it. I never got to build anything in my life. So I'm glad I'm getting to build this. I'm getting educated later in life. Yeah. Can I quickly step in? I mean, going back to your Detroit example, I think it is not rocket science. If you were to go to Stanford or Harvard and encourage them to build a second big campus right in the middle of Detroit, it will start by itself. You will have top-talented students coming to Detroit. They will enjoy the ability to find low-cost living space within a very short period of time. All the surrounding infrastructure of restaurants and cafeterias and whatever you need will be established there. So I think the whole point of education is a massive driver of urban redevelopment, especially in places which really need to completely reinvent themselves. You know the saying, if you want a great city, build a university and wait 100 years. Well, maybe it won't take 100 years if you take a Stanford University or a Harvard University. But I think it's where it starts because one of the challenges with especially Western cities is obviously the demography. Many of those places are getting really, really old. And so one of the most important ways to fight that is that you bring in universities and that you bring in the infrastructure for young families, childcare and all those things so that they reinvent themselves, that they stay young. And that's important. And I think we have, it was raised before the topic. I think you mentioned it, the topic of the big touristic cities of the world. That is really something which has two sides to it. Yes, on the one hand, it's great. We all like to go to Paris and we all like to go to London. But for the people who are living in Paris, who are living in London, it's less attractive that they are becoming the hotspots of tourism. And again, there will be a task to find a balance for that and to keep a place livable for the people who live in that place. Sure. We, I'll go back to young people in the rest of the world, in the fourth thirties. In your discussions during your days that you got together, what did you talk about in any way, how to scale, how to replicate some of these ideas? Maybe we'll start with Vancouver. Back on what Mr. Arashid was talking about, education has been at the heart of the discussion that we had last week. Our speakers were actually discussing STEM education, everything that's science, technology, engineering and mathematics. And one of the takes of our event was that it all comes down to a deep collaboration and a dearest sustainability, both of which can be achieved without having a sustainability culture that can actually be instilled through education. Most cities are different, but they all share the same problems. And the solution shouldn't be that different either. We need basically a cross-sector collaboration because the government alone can bring change. They can be a leadership structure, a leadership by influence that brings everybody together, working towards a common vision. As one of our speakers last week said, one way of de-risking something is if everyone around you is doing it. Vancouver has the green culture, and that's one of the factors helping the greenest city initiative to succeed. Being part of an environment that wants you to succeed is going to push you forward. That brings us back to what was said earlier on education. We need to instill the sustainability culture in kids at an early age if we want to see change in the future. Right. Anyone else from the Shaper Hubs? Maybe we'll go with Belfast. Let's be specific about ways we can scale and replicate some of the good ideas that you guys are coming up with in your different cities. Yes, so Belfast is no stranger to struggle, and we know how to overcome that. And because of that, we've really fostered an environment that really allows innovation. So around one of the indicators for an knowledge economy which we hit a record high on was the number of patents per head. So we're really doing a lot of great work in that space, but a way to constantly encourage and replicate that in the future is we've really linked it into our young people through various competitions that we run across Ireland to really highlight this as a career. So we have our young innovators competition and the BT scientist award, which also works to take that and show that it is something that we can do in another form of replicating this across the world as the UK expansion director of the worldwide non-profit Women Who Code, which is dedicated to eradicating the gender bias. I brought this to Belfast in the first instance and created a huge wave in a space for women to come together and really create connections and better their digital technology confidence. And then I replicated that across London, Bristol, Edinburgh, Dublin, and we are now possibly one of the biggest branches all together across our 80,000 members across the world. So Belfast really has a positive and encouraging environment that allows the young people today to push boundaries and really push the side boundaries and make them non-existent. Seattle, you had an idea on this, replicating and scaling, good ideas. Yes, just to continue on that point, I think it's really important to reconsider the way we think about education and that high quality education is happening both inside and outside of universities in the modern economy and that there are programs such as very high quality coding boot camps happening all over the world, which prepare workers for entry level technology jobs in a short amount of time and equip them with the skills they need to begin a career in technology. So I agree that universities are a very important place for learning, of course, but I also think we need to expand our definition of where high quality education happens in order to make that accessible to more people and also to meet the demand of our current workforce. So, Kito, you wanted to add about how to scale and replicate. In good initiatives, it was at the heart one of the main concerns of our activity and that was basically why this innovation map is being created and fueled by initiatives because basically it serves two objectives. First, the idea to know what others are doing and how they're doing it, if they're doing it well, how to sort of copy but replicate their ideas. And the other objective of the map is once you have all this information, once you have mapped these initiatives of entrepreneurs and innovators in general in a various range of topics, then to show this platform to other hubs of the global shapers in Latin America so that they can also add more information and add more initiatives. So as a normal citizen, I look what is going on and not only in terms of what this enterprises, these startups, these small companies are doing, but also know information about gender parity because we want to add those specific details. If they need venture capital, needs for volunteers, so I think this idea of replicating what others are doing was at the core of our activity and of our map. Great. It's quite fascinating, you will mostly be aware of this, but it's only been about five years since more of humanity began living in cities than living in the countryside. That was only about three or four or five years ago, we reported it in the financial times, big moment. So it's, and you talk to world leaders, even leaders of countries and they say, they'll admit this when you're talking to them on this topic that cities are actually where the future is. I mean, if you look at the UK, London is really almost another country on its own and the drain from the countryside into London is always, it's always continuing. I am involved in quite a few of these forums and around cities, I go to one every year that the Financial Times does with the Chicago Global Council and that is, it's all about cities and it's got a lot of support in the US and what's fascinating is you get people from all, mayors from all over the world, they all come there and they all talk to each other and they share ideas and it really, once a major city, the top city in the country starts to change and to innovate, that really starts, it gets replicated all through the country very quickly. So it's something that perhaps you and your hubs could get together, I mean, you now have at least four, I'm sure there are many others, talking about how to innovate and talking about how to improve cities. One initiative that would be wonderful to see and it may already be happening is if you can all get together and share your ideas. That to me seems like one of the fastest and most effective ways to scale and replicate what you're doing in each place. I'm just gonna give a quick summary of what I think the main messages I've taken away and then I'm gonna ask all of you as well. To me, I thought it was, it's fascinating, it's fascinating actually all throughout Davos how often we come back to education. Education seems to be one of just the truly central themes for everyone and we've really talked about that a lot today. To me, this idea of income disparity and ghetto-wise, ghettos of prosperity, there is a little neighborhood in Hong Kong, I know I see a couple of friends of mine from Hong Kong here so I won't be too disparaging, I won't be specific, but there are one or two neighborhoods in Hong Kong and I live near one of them and you go there and every single person is a banker or works for an accounting firm or is a lawyer. I mean, that's it, there's only three professions, no journalists, we can't afford it, these are really expensive places, but it's fascinating and actually it's a little bit sad. I mean, you talk to the people who live there and they actually, you know, they say it's sort of a bit of a shame, we don't have more diversity in a small neighborhood. Luckily, Hong Kong is so tiny, you can walk five minutes and you're in another neighborhood but it is a problem and it's a problem in London, it's a problem in a lot of places. I like what Christian said, the sort of key things for making an innovative city, it's governance I think, we discussed a lot, the M word, it's how to attract talent, top university again, education and it's about infrastructure, digital of course, but also physical, I thought that was really important and something that I, living in some less developed places in my life, I think that's really crucial, it's not just about the driverless cars and the super high speed broadband and virtual reality and Pokemon and whatever, it's also about just the basic physical infrastructure, if you don't get that right, how can you even imagine all the other innovations? So what we I think have been talking about a little bit here today is also about more simple innovations that deal with some of the more prosaic problems that we all have still in even some of the biggest cities. We talked a little bit about the environment, I think that's a, you know, maybe a topic a bit more for another day and we talked about women being allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, which I hope will happen by the time your daughter's old enough, I really do. So I would like to open it up a little bit if there's anyone in the audience who has any questions for the panelists or even some brief statements, it's not an opportunity to stand up and make a pitch for business or anything, but if you do have anything you'd like to add to the discussion, I think the point of this is that it's interactive and it's very inclusive. So feel free. I might also ask the, I'm gonna come back to you and I'll ask you all for a roundup at the end as well. But maybe if you have anything more to add from the hubs, you could feel free to pitch in. Is there anyone in the audience who'd like to? Yeah, please. Yeah, hi, quick question to the panelists. Do you think there'll be a kind of shared cities in the future, a new model of sharing the city rather than what is right now? A model? What kind of innovation of shared cities? Just like when you have an Uber, it's no more your car. So this week I feel like living in Riyadh, but next week I feel like living in Quito. Yeah, but different from Airbnb or that, it's more permanent, but something that could be more affordable. I look at the, you know, the contributors there and look at what they're facing, how those cities will develop. I mean, are we gonna have bigger cities when we can have it more affordable? Can we have a different economical model to share the cities? Yeah, my name is Buday and I come from Kuwait. Thank you, sir. Well, I can't look away, just so you know. Yeah. This is a very rich topic and it would be more suitable for brainstorming session where we can all share ideas around that. But what I could see is that when you have places which are very close to each other, Washington, Baltimore, or you know, have that all over the place, you could kind of, if the different municipalities, the mayors would sit at a table and say, okay, these are the five, six, 10 things which we need to deliver on. Who of us is uniquely positioned to be kind of number one in that area and who could be number one in that area? That would drive a lot of efficiency and it would help to kind of strengthen the whole region. At the moment, what we see is very stiff competition between these different cities and from an overall position, it doesn't make a lot of sense. You know, somebody is lowering its taxes to attract a little bit more business than the business is moving to that city and then the other one is doing this and the other one is doing that. If you put it all together, they're all losing. Nobody is winning. And so this is something I think which will come in epitably predominantly in those places who I go back to that demographic issue who have these aging population and who are losing their taxpayer space and they will have to come up with a new solution. And the moment you are a bit under threat, you will start to share and to cooperate. When you feel very strong, you think you can do it all by yourself. Well, I'm sure just to quickly say that the sharing economy today is, you know, it's an infancy really. And it's changing the way we think about asset ownership, about asset utilization, but also about how we design our cities. We introduced a bike sharing program in cake and it's unbelievable. Everybody thought nobody would use it and you can hardly find a bike in the city. They're not stolen, but they were just, so yes, you will see a lot more of that in the future. Yes, I have a quick question, Abdul Tif Shahrukh also from Kuwait. We explored a lot of themes today and one theme that I was hoping that, you know, our esteemed panelists could expand on is the role of infrastructure in diversifying an economy. I think the Saudi model is one we're all looking at in the region, but I'm sure there are examples all around the world where infrastructure has led to more diverse economies. I raise that to both our panelists and even our global shapers. We invest a lot in infrastructure, ad cake, and we are changing the logistics map of the region, frankly, because the Red Sea, although it's one of the most important trade route in the world, I would say the most important in terms of traffic, 23% of global trade goes through it, we don't have sufficient port capacity. And so yes, I agree with you 100%. I think infrastructure planned correctly for the right reasons, because not all infrastructure is done for the right reasons can change an economy and can allow you to intersect us that were not possible for a country before. And guess what? Countries do not compete alone. Cities compete, really. Cities drive country competitiveness and that's why this conversation around innovation is so important. And the last thing I would say about this is that we should also remember that not to be too condescending to innovators. They will survive anywhere. They will find a way to live and to succeed in the worst kind of environment you can imagine. That's why they're innovators. But what we're talking about here is how our cities can incubate them and help them a bit more. But ultimately they drive the agenda, not cities. No, I completely agree. Infrastructure is incredibly important to change cities and to make cities attractive. And I go as far as point around cities are driving the economy of a country. I mean, when we think about the very current discussion, what will the Brexit do to the financial industry in the UK? People are not saying that the banks will move to France or to Germany or to Ireland. They are saying the banks will move to Paris, to Frankfurt, to Dublin, to Amsterdam. And so the impact what the local municipalities, the mayors have on such a decision is probably far higher than the impact what a country can have on such a decision. And so the role of the mayors will significantly gain importance over the coming decades because cities are very much the place where people want to live. And so we frankly have to reinvent a little bit the way how we govern countries and cities because we have to become reflective of that trend. Maybe London will separate from the UK and join the European Union, for example, potentially. I would vote for that. Yeah, if I had a vote, I probably would too, yeah. Okay, I'm gonna turn again to our Shaper Hubs in the fourth cities. I see it's getting dark in Dublin. I would just like to give you a quick minute each to tell us what's next for the projects that you've been discussing. And also see if you have anything that you'd like from Davos, if you have anything to ask from the people in this room and the people watching this live on the internet. And is there anything that you'd like from us? So we'll start with Belfast. Hi, so yeah, I just wanted to really find me and take away as the physical size of a location is irrelevant. Belfast has always been known for being innovative, whether it's with shipping or aerospace. And now we're doing it with engineering and technology. We have a global network hinge here so we have some huge companies that have their main bases here such as Deloitte, BWC, City, Allstate. And again, because of those companies coming here and really creating that environment where it says, yes, I want Belfast people to work for me. We have a huge influx of startups now coming here abroad and both spreading up from different cities. We're using this opportunity today as a stepping stone for millennials. Drive change really make a difference, both that really make a difference in this country today. And on that note, we're inviting our system people here today to Belfast this summer and further discuss what we're talking about today. We'll even take you on a trip to her. And can we come and watch Game of Thrones being filmed? And... I promise we'll do that, yeah. Okay, see, she just promised that you can all take her up on it. Seattle. The emphasis of our discussion in Seattle really was that without intentionally building in inclusion into every aspect of the design of an ecosystem, the overall potential for innovation will always fall short because there will be perspectives and voices that are left out that have tremendous potential to innovate. And so it's a very high bar and it's a difficult task for any city or any ecosystem. But I think it's imperative, not just in the sense of feeling good, but it's actually an economic imperative. And what I would ask of the Davos community is just to keep that principle at the forefront and also increase transparency around these conversations and more and more data is being published all the time on the demographic representation in various ecosystems. And I think the more data we have access to, the better equipped we are to have real discussions about solutions. I can tell you that the World Economic Forum is pretty obsessed in a good way about... It may not seem it today with three men on the panel, but I know they tried very hard to get at least one or two women on this panel and it was not possible. By the way, Financial Times also cares a lot about the issue of diversity and we're working very hard on it too. So thank you. Keto, first of all, what you're doing next and then what you'd ask of the Davos community in this room and more broadly. That was the conclusion of our activity, exactly because we wanted to receive feedback from innovators and entrepreneurs that were invited to the activity and now that we have all that information, we are looking forward to improving the innovation map then compile sort of a white paper to replicate this initiative in other happens region. So I think we're doing a good work and the sky's the limit. And in terms of what I would ask from Davos, if you are people from 20 to 30 years old, apply to become a global shaper because you see us here. We are people driven to improve our cities, our communities and to make an impactful change. And if you are decision makers, policy makers, do listen to what the youth has to say, to what we have to say and get in touch with global shapers back in your cities. Are there any global shapers in the room? Yeah. Yeah. All right. I think you have to become a global shaper before you can come here. I think you can't come here until you're already one, but that's a good point to the people watching at home. Vancouver. Well, the Vancouver hub is actually in a planning phase for now and we are looking for and hoping to collaborate with other hubs around the globe and the global shapers community has now over 450 hubs. And that's a shout out to Seattle since they're here with us tonight. We are seriously looking forward to collaborating more and we're earlier talking about duplicating projects and efforts in terms of innovation sustainability, but we can do that in any other field. And in terms of what I might be asking of Davos is probably to work on better connecting all the global shapers. The Cambridge hub has been working on an amazing project named Random Shapers, which is basically connecting random global shapers from around the world for weekly or monthly Skype calls for 20 minutes. And that has been one of the greatest experiences that I've had so far with the community, is just connecting with random shapers and talking about their projects, their dreams and seeing if we can work together, if we can duplicate their projects and how can we influence them and how can we get influenced by these global shapers? Well, I see some blue badges around the room so I'm sure someone's taking notes and ideally is gonna give you, take your suggestion and turn it into action. Yeah, I think it's good opportunity since we do have some shapers. Maybe, would you like to add anything to the discussion we've had today? Hi, I'm Sohara. I'm a global shaper from Bangladesh, the Dhaka hub. First of all, thanks for a great panel. It's very informative. I wanted to actually focus on the issue of resilience, especially in the context of disasters and disaster management for cities. Like to give an example from my city, our biggest risk is one of the most vulnerable ones to, let's say, if there is an earthquake, the city would be completely flattened and the worst part comes afterwards, when in terms of actually building back post-disaster. And what we've been doing is we've been working to actually crowdsource ideas of how we can raise awareness about what to do in a post-disaster situation. And I think there's scope for innovation and we've been doing that in a small scale with the government of Bangladesh. But I actually wanted to ask you to, in terms of given how much innovation is happening and how many of the best leaders in this field that we have in Davos, how can we maybe channel some of those brains and some of those ideas into making cities more resilient? Oh, thank you for that one. I would like to take that question and drive that maybe a little bit further down. In my experience, mayors of all municipalities have mostly great intentions to do a good job. But they are lacking knowledge, they are lacking experience. And so we have to help them in gaining that knowledge and gaining that experience. Now you could say we should make it mandatory that everybody who wants to run for a mayor job has to first six months travel the world and take examples and gain that experience. But maybe I would take it back to you guys, the global shapers of the forum, that you create a platform where you bring in great ideas and best examples of your hometown and that platform is accessible for all mayors of the world. And you will constantly update that with new ideas and so these mayors can see what's going on in other places and they can learn from that and then you give them feedback. If they do a good job, you tell them that they are doing a good job and if they do a bad job, you also tell them that they are doing a bad job and that they are much better examples in other places of the world. At the end of the day, when I speak to them, they want to do a good job but they don't have the education and they don't have the experience what is needed and so we need to help them. Good point. Fahad, would you like to answer? Sure, sure. When we talk about resilience in cities, we talk about ability of the community to both respond and recover from a disaster. And I find that the ability of cities to predict what kind of disasters they will face is actually very much lacking. Very few of them have plans for how to address any potential disaster. So how... Until the disasters happen, they may fade for the last... That's why they call it a disaster, right? We couldn't predict it, so it's a disaster and therefore cities have to develop ability to identify risks and then secondly, obviously define response plans or mitigation plans and response plans but third, create civil societies that will allow the community to self-recover as well because ultimately, a municipality is a municipality. A government is a government. Ultimately, cities recover because its citizens help each other through the disaster and take care of the little things that a municipality might not see. Great. I think I'm gonna ask you, the panelists, to tell me what you've taken away from today from listening to the world and talking to you from these four cities and these passionate young people who have hopefully opened your eyes and given you some ideas. So maybe we'll start with Christian. Anything that you take away... I mean, I've taken away a lot from what you've said but anything that sort of struck you that you'll take away from this panel? Well, I think the whole model of the global shapers is something when I came first to Davos seven years ago which was really impressive to me. The engagement and the passion and the willingness to drive to a better life and to a better society for all of us. And I was then lucky that a couple of years later I had a global shaper actually working in my immediate team and so I could experience that and whenever he was coming back from a meeting he was full of energy and I think that is what we need and that is what we try to keep in our organization that we listen to these young people and because they are the ones who have to live in those places which we are working on today and so they should have a say there. Not like our cynical old young global leaders. I don't know if you're all aware but the shapers have to be I think under 30 and the young global leaders have to be 30 to 40 so we're already past it, right? And I'm an alumni. And you're an alumni. Oh, God. Really old. He's an old global leader, clearly, yeah. But this energy is talking about Xiemi's fault, by the way. The Yiemi's in the back full of energy right now. It's like rubbing his energy everywhere. So anything you took away that you could share with us? No, I think, you know, like I have a consulting friend of mine who always told me when you want to close, close and say it's about three things. So I'm going to say three things. And say it with a resolute tone of voice so you'll write that down, write that down. Number one, it's about education. We talked about that. Number two is about creating inclusive communities that allow people, that allow you to retain people but to bring people from all walks of life including income, different income levels. And number three, creating an enabling environment for individuals and companies to do what they need to do, which is innovate. I couldn't have said it better myself. You just summarized for me as well. I'd just like to really thank the four of you in your cities for taking this time and for setting up these projects that you've done. And I really hope you can connect with each other even more and with the forum's help, you can spread some of the ideas that you've been discussing. I really want to thank the two panelists for having known for a few years and Christian's great to meet you. And thanks for making my job super easy and even a bit fun. So yeah, thank you to the audience too. Thanks.