Supporting development in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through culture-based innovation: expanding the Saudi national festival for culture and heritage into a national project for innovation and design

Abstract

"Supporting development in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through culture-based innovation" is a qualitative study directed toward decision-makers seeking solutions for development challenges. These challenges are, the economic diversification, the knowledge society stimulation, the design and innovation exploitation, and the culture and heritage utilization. However, the Culture-Based Innovation (CBI) is the outcome of a creative initiative that was launched in 2010 under the name Bellagio Mandala Group of Culture-Based Innovation. It aims to facilitate strategies and be a catalyst for innovative products and services that reflect the nation's culture and heritage. The researcher wanted to stimulate this initiative and highlight its reputation in relation to three issues: 1) the historical correlation between culture and development; 2) the design and innovation benefits from advancement cultural development ; and 3) the development challenges facing Saudi Arabia due to unclear of creative cultural production model based on innovation and design practice. One might ask the following questions: Is the researcher right in his approach about the conviction that culture-based innovation will be one of the suitable strategies to support development challenges in Saudi Arabia? And is it true that the advancement of Saudi culture and heritage through channels of innovation and design helps in finding various creative production platforms and a competitive economy? To answer these questions, the researcher had to build the thesis methodology on three levels. First, the cognitive level, which means collecting cultural data through creative ideas, innovation concepts, designing products, society's opinion, and the field observations. Second, the philosophical level, which means approving culture-based innovation through four field observations by using cognitive data that based on five stimuli: looking beyondness (apperception stimuli), realizing diverseness (analysis stimuli), expanding relatedness (augmentation stimuli), gathering logicalness (synthesis stimuli) and clarifying unknowingness (understanding stimuli). Third, the practical level, which means promoting the Saudi national cultural and heritage festival to be a development platform through cultural-based creativity, innovation, and design. The cognitive knowledge is based on Ibn Khaldun's civilization and urbanization thought, Malik Bin Nabi's thinking, things and human philosophy, and Paul Schafer's culture approaches. These approaches are culture as institutional, culture as practical, culture as theoretical, and culture as conceptual. To verify the significance of these attempts in reinforcing culture-based innovation, the researcher has conducted four field studies based on four cultural hypotheses. Each hypothesis is looking to approve that, the creativity, innovation, design, and the abilities of the talented has been one of the most important priorities that should busy the minds of decision-makers in Saudi Arabia, especially in relation to the development challenges by discovering the correlation between development and culture, and by the suitable cultural approach to activate developmental projects or initiatives. The first hypothesis is that the quality of development and its several outputs depends on the institutional approaches to reinforce culture, heritage, values, and the understanding of the related physical and moral issues (the institutional cultural approach). In order to confirm this hypothesis, Hong Kong was chosen as a case study. The observations commended that; the state must always be enthusiastic about choosing decision-makers with development skills based on those who can expand ideas and translate them into a basis of competitive economic and investment diversity. The second hypothesis is the material and immaterial sense of the communities' daily