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Diversification and Specialisation in the Gulf’s Digitised Creative Sectors

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Part of the book series: The Political Economy of the Middle East ((PEME))

Abstract

We explore the need to integrate sectoral learning and skills development into sectoral policies, particularly in priority sectors with significant potentials to contribute to economic diversification, whilst simultaneously moving towards sectoral specialisation. We first provide a circumscribed review of the creative sector as a potential employment-creating sector, specifically in the digitised creative segment in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates (UAE), focusing on the learning and upskilling required for innovating in the nascent creative sub-sectors. Secondly, exploring the in-situ learning episodes within a conceptual model, we point to the prominent use of skill webs as means of in-project upskilling and a resource for development of interprofessional learning and judgement capability which forms a core ingredient for innovation. Lastly, the final section briefly points to recent policy vistas and concludes.

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Alyani, N. (2018). Diversification and Specialisation in the Gulf’s Digitised Creative Sectors. In: Mishrif, A., Al Balushi, Y. (eds) Economic Diversification in the Gulf Region, Volume II. The Political Economy of the Middle East. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5786-1_6

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