Inside Dubai's mission to build the city of the future | His Excellency Khalfan Belhoul, Whitney Pennington Rodgers

**Elise Hu** (0:04)
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu.
What does it look like when a government becomes a laboratory for the future?

**Khalfan Belhoul** (0:15)
So you get the entrepreneurs, you get the investors, and you back it up by also investing as government, and create an environment which is what we call the sandbox environment, which is really testing those ideas in a safe manner.

**Elise Hu** (0:28)
That's his Excellency, Khalfan Belhoul. He's the CEO of the Dubai Future Foundation. He sat down with TED curator, Whitney Pennington Rodgers, for a conversation about the ways Dubai is supporting bold experimentation in everything from AI and emerging tech to innovative finance solutions and climate change. They discuss why governments and organizations must embrace failure as an integral part of progress and why global collaboration is the only path forward in this age of AI, climate risk and geopolitical tension.

**Khalfan Belhoul** (1:00)
The world has recently been giving us so many signs, so many signs that there's no other way forward than us to all get together.

**Elise Hu** (1:11)
That's coming up after a quick break. And now, our conversation of the day.

**Whitney Pennington Rodgers** (1:29)
Thank you for being here, Your Excellency.
You run the Dubai Future Foundation. For those of us who are not initiated, what is a future foundation?

**Khalfan Belhoul** (1:38)
So imagine you run a lab, and the owner of the lab comes to you and says, you can do whatever you want, and you have my full backing, and you have solid amount of financial resources. If rules are an issue, we can change them for you. We can connect you with any relevant decision maker to break those rules. We will not be upset if you make mistakes, and we will support you on every winning bet you make.
In summary, will you take that?

**Whitney Pennington Rodgers** (2:18)
I would take that deal, yeah.

**Khalfan Belhoul** (2:20)
Okay, so the owner of the lab is Sheikh Mohammed Barashid. The lab is Dubai Future Foundation.
So that's how it is. We are entitled and empowered to explore new ideas, to see where the future is heading. We've been supported and backed by a top board of trustees. I mean, our chairman is the Crown Prince. The board members are ministers and director generals across all sectors, which means if we want to disrupt mobility, we can. If we want to talk health tech, we can. If we want to explore fintech, we can. We have the muscle behind us.
And we have the support in case we fail. The unique thing is this makes us, which is usually, and I'm sure you're aware from, I mean, the global landscape, that usually governments are hurdle or they take time or they're bureaucratic. We are hearing from our leaders that we can actually do this. This is music to our ears. So this pushes us. This makes us comfortable and actually pivoting. And if we have any venture captains out here, you would understand this more than anyone. They don't talk about 80% of their portfolio that goes bust, but they really back the winning bets. But they've all made those mistakes, but they don't look at them as mistakes. They look at them as learning points. And I think this mindset that's been given to us from leaders to really explore and test and double down on winning bets is what made Dubai Future Foundation a success.

**Whitney Pennington Rodgers** (3:46)
I think a lot of nations and a lot of cities talk about this idea of progress and being futurist, but it's hard to sustain that. And so what are some of the ways that you're able to get by in and to be able to embed in both government and culture futurist thinking?

**Khalfan Belhoul** (4:04)
What we do is we start, first of all, by ensuring that our internal team are experts in understanding where the future is heading. So we invest a lot in people that have this as their subject matter expertise when it comes to future foresight. So we invest a lot of on internal talent. So we have a foresight team that does horizon scanning on a constant basis, and this becomes our engine. But we don't stop there because this is not only confined to us as the Dubai Future Foundation, we also connect with like minded networks from all over the world that also feed us more information.
And then this gives us a view of where the future is heading, and the further you go, the grayer it becomes. We can maybe have a better prediction of what's happening in 2026 The more you go, the more challenging the guests would be, right? But the more conversations you have, the more inclusion there is in the conversation, the better visibility you have. And then it's all about being agile and flexible, and getting everyone involved, and having the guts to really test.