April 24th, 2016: Canadian University Dubai has brought together speakers from over 30 countries to debate the emerging challenges and long-term solutions to some of the key business challenges arising in the globalized economy, at a two-day international conference hosted at Atlantis – The Palm, Dubai.
Opened by former Prime Minister of Malaysia, H.E. Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, the International Conference on Leadership, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (ICLIE’16) set out to stimulate a transnational debate around five headline themes: International Entrepreneurship and Small Business; Contemporary Leadership and Management; Technology, Innovations, and Sustainability; New Trends in Global Economics, Finance, and Management; and Islamic Banking and Finance.
Following keynotes addresses from Dr. Mahathir and Mr. David Wang, CEO of ICLIE’16 chief sponsor, Huawei UAE, day one of the conference saw more than two hundred delegates attend a series of seminars and workshop led by eminent academics and practitioners in the field. Topics ranged from the women’s entrepreneurs in the UAE, to effective practices in IT governance.
Day two of the conference opened with a keynote speech from Professor Benoit Montreuil, of Georgia Tech Institute, USA, who is leading the International Physical Internet Initiative. Professor Montreuil discussed his research on the paradigm-shifting innovation towards worldwide sustainable hyperconnected logistics and supply chains.
A second keynote address from Dr. Margaret Dalziel of the University of Waterloo, Canada, discussed the outcomes of large and small bets in relation to entrepreneurship policy, illustrating the benefits and pitfalls of both transformational and small-scale business creation strategies.
Parallel sessions exploring different aspects of the five conference themes continued into the afternoon, with workshops covering issues including sustainable innovation, the opportunities and challenges for Islamic Banking, spiritual tourism, responsible leadership, and the growth in e-learning in the region.
Professor Rachid Benlamri, General Chair of the Conference and Vice President of Academic Affairs at CUD, said, “Our goal at this conference is to stimulate a multi-disciplinary debate that will promote a better understanding of current issues and solutions to the challenges facing the globalized economy.
“We aim to bring forward new ideas and focus upon the principles and practices that characterise effective innovation leadership. We want to support the journey towards an economy driven by entrepreneurs in a business-friendly environment, where public and private sectors form effective partnerships for growth.”
The event concluded with a gala dinner at the Atlantis Ballroom, which saw the presentation of the conference awards, including the Best Paper Award, which went to Pia Hautamäki for her paper ‘Business to Business Buyer-Seller Interactions from the perspectives of Personality Theory and Transformational Leadership Theory’; and the Best Student Paper Award, which went to Angelika Dankert for her paper ‘Clustering Countries According to their Cultural Proximity and Similarity’.
Proceedings from the event will be published by Springer. Canadian University Dubai is grateful for the support of conference sponsors, Huawei UAE and Air Canada.
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