High-level Saudi SME team visits Dubai Future Accelerators

Dubai / Emirates Business

A high-profile delegation from Saudi Arabia’s General Authority for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), visited the Dubai Future Accelerators (DFA) program’s headquarters in in Jumeirah Emirates Towers Offices.
The Authority was recently established to support and develop small and medium enterprises in Saudi Arabia, and increase their contribution to the economic development of the Kingdom.
The delegation, headed by Dr Ghassan Ahmed Al-Sulaiman, Governor of the General Authority for Small and Medium Enterprises, were introduced to DFA’s approach to finding sustainable solutions to the challenges facing – or that are anticipated to face – sectors of strategic priority for the UAE. The Dubai Future Accelerators has become the world’s most attractive business acceleration program, attracting, in its first round, as many as 2,274 of the most innovative projects from 73 countries around the world in less than a month.
Furthermore, His Excellency Saif Al Aleeli, CEO of the Dubai Future Foundation (DFF), gave a detailed presentation, highlighting the importance of the program, and its role in anticipating and planning for the future. The presentation additionally explored the role of science and Fourth-Industrial-Revolution technologies in transforming current challenges into opportunities for
future generations.
HE Al Aleeli said: “The Dubai Future Foundation is working to implement the Dubai Future Agenda by adopting future-focused initiatives that cement Dubai’s position as a global platform to anticipate and plan for the future. This includes the Dubai Future Accelerators
program, which has witnessed tremendous success and is now the center of regional and global attention.”
“We are honored to be welcoming a delegation from Saudi Arabia’s General Authority for Small and Medium Enterprises,” HE added, “as this resonates with our objectives and efforts to spread knowledge and encourage the exchange of insight and expertise between all relevant and influential institutions.”
Meanwhile, Dr Ghassan Ahmed Al-Sulaiman said: “This is my first visit to the Dubai Future Accelerators program and I hope that it will not be the last. I was very impressed with the quality of the companies in the program and the products and devices that they are working on developing. I congratulate the management of the Accelerators on developing such an innovative model that is built around the technological innovation needs of Dubai and on their desire to create sustainability for the program through commercializing the business model of the accelerator.”
The Dubai Future Accelerators is an intensive 12-week program that pairs top companies and cutting-edge entrepreneurs with powerful partners in Dubai to create breakthrough solutions together. It explores and develops the technologies of the future and employs them to resolve problems and challenges facing the cities of the 21st century. The program aims to create a global platform to attract the brightest minds from around the world to find creative solutions for the challenges of the future and implement them in the city of Dubai.
The program organizes three annual rounds, going on for three months each. In every round, innovative companies from around the world work to identify challenges and find technological solutions for them, all the while flagging potential opportunities. DFA offers training workshops to develop businesses and prototypes that can be tested in Dubai before coming up with lucrative
business models that can be
implemented worldwide.