With participation of a leading international expert,

SCA initiates an advanced workshop on innovation and creativity

Al Turifi: introducing critical thinking initiatives, building creative models, and developing methodological hypotheses

Specialized working groups in the financial sector to tailor unconventional solutions

 The Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA) held a workshop on innovation and creativity, in the presence and with the participation of H.E. Abdulla Al Turifi, SCA CEO, CEO deputies, and department managers and advisors.    

 The workshop—the first of its kind held in federal bodies—aimed at identifying innovation elements and mechanisms, finding ways to disseminate and encourage the culture of innovation among SCA employees and staff, and inspiring new creative ideas. The workshop comes in implementation of the directives of H.H. President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan and the approval of the Cabinet, under the chairmanship of H.H.Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister, and Ruler of Dubai, to announce 2015 the Year of Innovation.  

 SCA hosted Peter Fisk, a leading international expert consultant in innovation and creativity, to run the workshop and show the practical applications that help to demonstrate and put into practice the concept of brainstorming in a methodological framework that ensures the creative development of enterprises and business strategies.

Fisk demonstrated the various innovation concepts and standards, the conditions for creating an innovation environment, and the factors and elements that allow generating ideas and unconventional solutions to encounter daily business challenges. He cited models from the extensive research conducted while serving as a professor of strategy, creativity, and marketing at a prestigious business school in Europe and from his experience as a chief executive officer in one of the major marketing organizations in the world. His book Creative Genius, translated into over 40 languages, examines a set of concepts, rules, and creative guidelines, including rule breaking, creative fusions, future back, open innovation, and world views. His book takes inspiration from the geniusLeonardo da Vinci and includes 20 practical tools ranging from scenario planning and context reframing to accelerated innovation and market entry.

In the four-session workshop, Fisk, who previously worked in Concorde, demonstrated numerous creative development experiments carried out by a number of international institutions and corporations, including IDEO, Google, Amazon, Apple, and American banks through adopting idea fusion strategies to provide more distinctive services to clients that ensure further satisfaction and increased interest in the services provided, in addition to examples of individuals and institutions who succeeded in putting into action their creative ideas to overcome hurdles and challenges, such as smart watches and flying cars.

Along with the lecturer, H.E. Al Turifi divided participants into a number of working groups, according to the SCA four sectors. He supervised the process of putting into practice the brainstorming methodology, introducing critical and creative thinking initiatives, developing hypotheses, and building creative models, using structural templates and tools through which creative ideas and perspectives were generated to raise the efficiency and effectiveness of inspections and supervisory functions aimed at reducing capital market violations, enhancing the efficiency of dispute settlement, bolstering institutional investment, promoting dual listing, tailoring a digital program for career development, and monitoring and following up operations using smart devices and live broadcasting systems via computer applications, video conferences, artificial intelligence techniques by making use of the advanced digital environment of the UAE financial markets.

Prior to the workshop, SCA held a meeting for employees in senior positions to examine the new institutional excellence system standards for the Mohammed bin Rashid Government Excellence Award categories, mechanisms to promote the culture of excellence, as well as the 2014 annual performance indicators report.

H.E. Al Turifi said that the meeting discussed the fourth generation standards and requirements of the government excellence system launched by H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister, and Ruler of Dubai, as a business reference for all government excellence programs to promote the approach to excellence and establish it as a national culture. It also discussed the outcomes of the performance of strategic indicators and government enablers in the past year and the extent to which standards apply to SCA, as well as mechanisms to promote the culture of excellence and positive competition among employees and organizational units as a major enabler of developing institutional performance.