Chapter 4: Technological Innovation Ecosystem for Sustainable Development: Multi-cases From Federal Universities in UAE

Gulf universities have aligned their strategic goals with the national Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to enhance their contribution to this cause. Federal Universities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have developed research and enterprise priorities in food security, clean water and energy, women empowerment, inclusive public services and sustainable tourism. In this chapter, the authors provide award-winning technological innovation projects in the areas mentioned above of SDG, which the UAE Government has successfully funded due to their wide outreach and promising impact on achieving goals.

The Triple Helix Model (THM) is adopted to analyze how the universities collaborate with industry and governmental organizations to launch an ecosystem of technological innovations in emerging fields of artificial intelligence (AI) for precision analytics in agriculture and food supply chain, metaverse for sustainable tourism, augmented reality for women empowerment in public services and mobile technologies for financial inclusion.

Our multi-case evidence maps the interaction among universities, the private industrial sector and the government and analyzes the nature and extent of collaborations among these sectors. The authors also managed to assess the contribution of each sector to such technological innovations and foresee their impact on the SDGs. Above all, the authors developed a systemic collaboration framework among these sectors to maintain a sustainable technological innovation ecosystem in the restless global challenges and crises.