Neom and the green innovation strategy – Al Bilad English Daily
Head of The Entrepreneurship Committee
Saudi-Chinese Business Council
@fahadnalarjani
“Throughout history, cities were built to protect their citizens. After the Industrial Revolution, cities prioritized machines, cars, and factories over people. In cities that are viewed as the world’s most advanced, people spend years of their lives commuting. By 2050, commute durations will double.”
These were the words that marked the beginning of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman’s speech before announcing the launch of THE LINE project last January. I recalled the time I spent in Shanghai, one of the smartest cities in terms of lifestyles and the largest in the East. With a population of over 30 million people, the city always mesmerizes its visitors from all over the world.
Who would’ve thought that cars, a means of transportation, were to become a daily burden on their users in the economic and financial city of Shanghai? The reason is due to pollution and traffic jams. This fact made the city build smart transportation networks including friendly-environment metros and lightning-speed trains (300 km/h). Factories were relocated to remote areas while draconian legislation measures were passed to enforce green management and use technology as an economic ecosystem. Despite it all, people there still complain about environmental pollution because the problem has been deeply rooted for ages. Crown Prince said in his speech, “Cities prioritized machines, cars, and factories over people.”
The best way to foresee the future is to draw it. The green development which Shanghai made one of its future goals was on the top of the Crown Prince’s list of projects. The LINE is a city of a million residents with a length of 170 km that conserves 95 percent of nature within Neom, with zero cars, zero streets, and zero carbon emissions. You can run daily errands on foot and get everything you need in a matter of five minutes. You can get to the farthest point in the city within 20 minutes. Renewable energy and green hydrogen make this city a civilization revolution because it puts a human being first in order to build a community in sync and harmony with its sustainable healthy smart environment. The city’s idea is based on the Vision 2030 strategy and on green innovation management as a new concept in modern managerial science.
But how did the Kingdom take a different approach? Overconsumption of natural resources in industrial development led scientists and researchers and recently even countries to pay more attention to and focus on the impact of profit-making organizations on the environment and sustainability. In order to address the pressure, companies had to adopt green innovation and incorporate it into business strategies. It became an inevitable choice for private enterprises and public corporations. Green innovation can be defined as manufacturing, assembling or using a product and optimal management to reduce the negative impact on the environment and human beings while guaranteeing profit, which is considered one of the pillars of sustainability. Green innovation is closely related to managerial and technological innovation because it offers new methods and approaches of management where products and services rely on smart technical production. However, it usually involves higher risks and long-term return on investment.
Another important factor is “the pressure of domestic initiatives”. Innovative management researchers and scientists view this factor as one of the key stimulants to apply green innovation management. By domestic initiative, I refer to Kingdom’s Vision 2030, which mobilized all public and private organizations as well as individuals to accomplish it. The Vision pushed us to innovate, take risks, and forget about the quick unsustainable returns. Here I will cite the words of the Minister of Communications and Information Technology Eng. Abdullah Al-Sawaha describing the Vision as “a leadership model in one team’s spirit, both the public and private sectors as well as the non-profit sector, all working together to achieve the same goal.”
NEOM has become a project for drawing the future and making the Kingdom a global destination. But what if Neom were the headquarters of the largest academy of managerial and technological innovation which would draw the youngest experts and innovators all over the world and had the largest valley of “green entrepreneurship and innovation”. This is not a dream of mine but a reality we will see on the ground soon in Neom, the city of human beings and the future.