Dr Hatem Bugshan

As CEO of Big Innovation Centre in the Middle East, Dr Hatem Bugshan aims to redefine the current innovation landscape to be more open and collaborative. Through the local presence of Big Innovation Centre, he leads its contribution to transforming the Middle East economy into a smart knowledge-based economy that can unleash economic growth and unlock the hidden potential of digital, AI and Future-Tech opportunities.

Hatem holds a unique combination of business skills, expertise, and passion for innovation-led societies:

Corporate leadership: As a member of Bugshan Group, Hatem’s experience in business leadership builds upon one of the largest conglomerates in the Middle East and North Africa region. The business group operates various companies in a diversified set of sectors, including real estate, automotive, perfumes and cosmetics, education, health, and security and defence.

Thought leadership in innovation: Hatem has received his PhD from the University of London. His specialism is Intellectual Property Rights and Open Innovation. He has published in high-quality peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Strategic Marketing, Journal of Enterprise Information Management, and Qualitative Market Research. He has also presented his papers at international conferences.

Entrepreneurship: Also, Hatem is the founder and president of Education e-Solutions which is established with a mission to become pedagogical and business enablers for both academic and corporate institutions by providing end to end services with a rationale, offering best practices and implementing solutions with a key focus on change management. Education e-Solutions is an innovative company that brings to Saudi Arabia the latest learning and teaching technologies right from immersive technologies such as Virtual Reality or Augmented Reality, Adaptive Learning or Machine Learning to Smart Campus technologies.

Hatem holds a PhD from the University of London (Birkbeck) in Intellectual Property Rights and Open Innovation.

“Never has the time and place been more timely. Together, we will create the taskforces that implement a new future for our smart city regions.”