Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, group chairman and CEO of DP World

The first time I ever heard the word ‘innovation’ was in 1987 from His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid during a Ramadan gathering. He uttered: ‘I need people with vision and innovation to be part of my team. These are going to be the leaders of tomorrow.’ I never understood what he really meant but read between the lines as if he was criticizing me personally.

I was so worried that I couldn’t wait but immediately ask His Highness what he intended by that remark. He answered smilingly: ‘I meant that all of you must change your pattern of thinking towards positivity, you must break away from defeatist thinking, and you should accept that there is no such thing as a deadlock. My team has no room for whoever can’t behave like this.’

People often ask, ‘Why do you have so many high rise buildings in Dubai?’ — this is a necessity. Dubai is a small place; if we didn’t opt to go vertically then our children would never see nature, as the whole place would have been covered. When I talk about Dubai and what I did, you can characterise it in blocks of ten years.

I was involved with the free zone, the Jebel Ali free zone, which I started in 1985, and DP World in the 1990s. A lot of things that have happened in Dubai evolved from necessity, and necessity is the mother of invention.

Through customs, ports, airports and free zones, we process about 18–19 million documents a year. That is about 1.5 million documents a month. Before we launched the electronic Government, we would never have been able to deal with so many. His Highness Sheikh Mohammed wanted to establish an electronic Government. He managed by example.

A lot of the time, I will admit, that innovation has come from within the organisation, rather than from the top. In airport customs, they come up with amazing initiatives out of necessity — not because we were pushing them, but because they found a way that takes them less time to do their job with precision.

The way I lead is that I want people to challenge ideas and talk to me without hesitation. I like to hear other opinions, so when people bring new ideas I am extremely accommodating. I welcome every single idea. What happens then is that ideas can be refined and adapted to find another way.

When I have an idea I try to sell it, I try to convince people. You know, as a boss, you can always just tell people to do things, but if it fails they will just say, ‘I wasn’t convinced.’ That’s why I always try and work with my people to convince them — because when a person is as passionate as you are, they will achieve the goal.

Much of our success comes from our employees, and our customers. In the 1980s, I used to have a breakfast meeting every week where I would invite free zone companies, employees and customers. We would brainstorm and come up with ideas. When you listen, you learn so much. Sometimes people want to talk, they want to hear themselves talking, and they miss so much. Listening is an amazing art.