DUBAI: Participants attending the International Forum on Creativity and Innovation held in Dubai on Sunday said they learnt “how to spur creativity and innovation in many ways” after listening to the field experts.

The one-day forum held at The Address Hotel in Old Town, Dubai, was organised by the Dubai Water and Electricity Authority (DEWA).

One of the key speakers, Rowan Gibson, an American author of two major books on innovation and strategy — Rethinking The Future (1996) and Innovation to the Core (2008) — which have been published to date in 25 languages, introduced ideas which participants said “were simple but extremely brilliant.”

He asked companies to give their employees incentives, time and room for innovation.

He emphasised that “innovative ideas usually do not come from the organisation, but from ordinary people who interact with the customers.”

“Ordinary people are capable of producing extraordinary thinking. For example, the sellers of Subway hamburgers were advised by one man to give discount on Saturdays, and the decision resulted in huge profits by the end of the year.”

A student of chemical engineering from the UAE University in Al Ain, Mohammed Al Katheri, said, “This lecture is very useful especially to us students of engineering because it gives us the opportunity to think outside the box and I feel we can invent, develop and innovate.”

The one-day forum was opened by the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Dewa, Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer. Over 150 people attended the forum.

Saeed said: “We always work to improve the learning and knowledge of our staff, who in turn build, produce, think and innovate.”

A Dewa employee told this reporter that “for long many people were thinking that experience was what mattered most in hiring an employee, but after this lecture we have learnt that nurturing the inexperienced is better because they are capable of change and are flexible.”

Gibson pointed out that it was important to train young people “for a better future of the organisation.”

He said that innovation must be “all the time, everywhere” as it is capable of reducing the costs and increasing profits.