By Lenka Kollar

This post is written for Masdar's 2015 Engage Blogging Contest. See my post on Nuclear Energy's Role in Sustainable Development entered in last year's contest.

In the next 15 years, more and more people will move to cities as populations grow and countries expand from agriculture and resource based economies to technology and knowledge based economies. We can already see the strain that rapid urbanization has on existing cities as they struggle to keep up. Severe traffic and overcrowded public transportation is common. Housing is expensive and unavailable near city centers, where most of the jobs are. While it is relatively easy to build an efficient and sustainable city from scratch, retrofitting existing cities in a sustainable way to meet the demand for rapid urbanization will be the real challenge in the next 15 years.

Many older cities, such as in Europe, have done a good job providing public transportation by building extensive metro systems underground. Others have distributed the strain on transportation by creating industrial hubs outside of the city center. Some urban areas have designated plots of land for community gardens. These ideas from cities that have already changed to match growing urbanization can be used to inspire and plan for future growth in a sustainable way.

Multiple City Center Hubs
The classic commute into downtown in the morning and back to the suburbs is archaic and cities should rethink where and how they allow companies to establish offices and operations. One example is to designate industrial hubs within the city and suburbs. Having multiple “city centers” would distribute the commute and allow people to live closer to work. Clusters of companies in similar industry chains would allow them to still effectively do business with each other and also share industrial, community, and even human resources.

Smart Transportation
It is no doubt that personal vehicles are one of the biggest contributors to green house gas emissions and unsustainable practices within cities. While having multiple city centers may ease commute distance, urban areas need to completely rethink their transportation infrastructure to match rapid urbanization. Data and technology can be used to develop a smart transportation system that allocates supply to demand. For example, Google Maps can already tell you and compare what your options are for getting to your destination. This data can be used to plan individual routes that minimize travel time to ease the strain on transportation systems according to demand. Smart transportation planning can be very effective if used by everyone, and would be further enhanced by self-driving vehicles that talk to each other and plan the most effective routes as a whole system.

Functional Landscaping
Green space is important for the environment and the sanity of urbanites but it can come at a large cost of resources, such as water. Dry regions especially use significant resources to keeps lawns and parks green. Cities should work to match their landscaping to their climate by using indigenous plants. In addition, green spaces can serve many purposes, including growing fruits and vegetables, recreational areas, and animal habitats. Thinking of landscaping as functional instead of visual will allow for cities to make better use of green space and use valuable resources more effectively.

Rapid urbanization in the next 15 years will present many challenges to existing cities. They will need to look to the past to identify best practices in retrofitting for a new world. Major infrastructure evolutions in the past, such as in the change from horses to cars, have happened before. Urban areas can grow in a sustainable way but forward thinking and fresh ideas will be necessary.

The Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030 is an initiative to diversify the economy from oil and gas to other industrial sectors, as partly described in my earlier post on wealth before development. The UAE must diversify for fiscal, economic, socio-economic, and conservation reasons. The economy is vulnerable to oil prices and the oil industry itself does not create a lot of jobs within the country. 

The Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development is funding small and medium businesses and has lent out over 1 billion dirhams to about 600 projects so far. Their idea is to foster an entrepreneurship culture within the UAE by identifying and encouraging citizens that are serious about starting a business and providing them with the necessary tools and funding. One interesting example is that Khalifa has funded artisans, mainly women, to design travel pouches for Etihad airlines.

Right now the economy is 70% resource (oil) based and 30% knowledge based. The Abu Dhabi Education Council is trying to flip this ratio. They've partners with top universities such as NYU and INSEAD to bring campuses to Abu Dhabi. In addition, only 20% of university graduates are in the STEM fields, but much more human capital in technology will be needed to support a knowledge-based economy.

One of the emerging sectors is renewable energy. The UAE is investing in renewable energy to diversify the energy supply, reduce carbon emissions, and create jobs. Renewables can also reduce water consumption for power generation by 19%. The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) will actually have its new headquarters in Masdar City (pictured above). 

By Lenka Kollar

I'm currently participating in the Abu Dhabi Action Learning Module sponsored by INSEAD and the UAE. We have a great group of 45 students from all over the world, some of which have worked in the region and others, like me, that have no experience here but are very interested.

The UAE was founded in 1972 by a conglomeration of seven emirates with Abu Dhabi as the capitol. The economy predominately depends on oil exports and has thus created a tremendous amount of wealth in the country. Unlike other prosperous nations, the wealth came before industrial development and the UAE is now using the wealth created by a resource-based economy to diversify into the industrial and technology sectors.

Mubadala is a government mandated investment fund to diversify the UAE's industry from oil and gas for a sustainable future economy. The fund represents about 10% of the wealth from oil resources. One sector that Mubadala has focused on is aerospace manufacturing. The Strata plant produces parts for Airbus and employs many local employees, 85% of which are women. Global partnerships bring industry to UAE. The Siemens regional headqaurters, for example, is in the new Masdar City, which is the first fully sustainable city in the world. The Masdar Institute conducts research in sustainability and renewables.

Other Mubadala investment projects include renewables, utilities, healthcare, and other segments of the oil industry. Under a separate mandate, the UAE is also investing in nuclear energy.

The Women Matter report focusing on women in the GCC (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE) found that a few key women have made it top leadership roles in companies and that it needs to go "from the first to the norm."

An action plan for doing this includes:

• Top management commitment to gender diversity by making it a strategic priority
• Leadership development programs that support women in finding their path towards leadership
• Providing training in recognizing and overcoming biases
• Collective enablers and policies that formally reinforce this change

While the path to changing women's influence and status in the workplace is long and difficult, we are well on the way and need to keep building the momentum to facilitate change. We recognize the need and now we need to implement concrete steps within organizations and make sure that they are fully realized.

By Lenka Kollar

Disruptive technologies are constantly changing our lives and the way society functions. It used to take decades for new technologies to be adopted nationwide or worldwide but now it is taking only 5-7 years for full adoption, according to an analysis by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI).

Dr. Jacques Bughin of MGI recently gave a presentation on disruptive technologies at INSEAD. He discussed the top new technologies that are or will soon be disrupting the economy (read the MGI report here). They include:

• Advanced materials
  
• Advanced robotics
  
• Advanced oil and gas exploration and recovery
  
• Energy storage
  
• Next generation genomics
  
• 3D printing
  
• Mobile internet
  
• Automation of work
  
• Internet of things
  
• Cloud technology
  
• Autonomous vehicles
  
• Renewable energy

Of course, I would like to focus on the disruption occurring in energy. There is clearly a natural gas exploration boom occurring, especially in the United States, that is disrupting the electricity sector with very low prices. This has caused numerous nuclear power plants to close or consider closing because of the high relative cost. In addition, subsidies for renewable energy are also making it less expensive. But is the government choosing which technologies to subsidize and which not, is it really economically disruptive?

When energy storage, both on the small and large scale, is perfected, it will surely be disruptive to the energy sector. More efficient small batteries will revolutionize personal device usage. Medium-sized batteries for are becoming more and more utilized in vehicles but still have limitations. Large scale energy storage technology for electricity will allow wind and solar energy to be more viable. More efficient electricity transition would also disrupt the energy sector.

In my operations class at INSEAD, Prof. Karan Girotra argues that it is not new technologies but innovative business models that disrupt the economy. For example, the innovation of the iPhone would have been nothing without the efficient production capacity and marketing of Apple. Keeping this in mind, I think that advanced nuclear technology has the potential to disrupt the energy sector but needs better business models to bring it to life. Small modular reactors can be a game changer but must be efficiently manufactured, shipped, and installed in order to capitalize on the large scale. We have the nuclear technology to disrupt the energy sector but now we need proper implementation.