In an exclusive interview with SAFETY4SEA at Nor-Shipping 2019 in Oslo, Mr. Nawfal Al Jourani, Director of Dubai Maritime Cluster Office at Dubai Maritime City Authority (DMCA), shared Dubai’s priorities as a major maritime hub of the Middle East. Moving forward from the environmental approach of sustainability, Mr. Jourani noted that innovation is the cornerstone of Dubai’s strategy in order to be attractive to the shipping community.
Dubai’s strategy really is not competition, it is collaboration and complementation. That we complement the big puzzle…I wouldn’t say we are competing with the other clusters; I would say we are adding value to them and complementing what they do.
The Dubai business model, Mr. Jourani noted, is based on a very simple, yet very important strategy:
- The drive for innovation and
- The vision from the top (leadership)
We are centered into adopting innovations, so that we keep having continuous competitive ability. A lot of people use the ‘sustainability’ element only to relate to environment. I believe it is more about sustaining how you actually provide human resources that know what they are doing, and most importantly realize the vision that it is to be achieved,
…he explained.
The challenges will always continue, he stressed, whether be it a new cap from the IMO or the challenge of human capital and how to train resources. This is why Dubai tries to be vigilant in line with business needs.
As far as Dubai is concerned, we always try to be vigilant and vibrant and agile in our response to market dynamics.
In this regard, Mr. Jourani emphasized on the recent launch of the Dubai Virtual maritime Cluster, an informative platform that can show potential investors every single detail to help them make decisions and therefore support the growing business needs of the community.
At DMCA, we always try to make innovation our cornerstone in developing product offerings that are adding value and are attractive to the shipping community.
