The Innovation-Based Competitive Advantage in Oman’s Transition to a Knowledge-Based Economy: Dynamics of Innovation for Promotion of Entrepreneurship

Oman, as a welfare state, should have effective administrative strategies for the promotion of entrepreneurship. The purpose of this paper is first to reveal the innovation-based competitive advantages of Oman’s economy; then compare Oman with Qatar relative to the Global Innovation Index’s (GII) sub-indices. The strategic vision and mission of the Sultanate’s four administrative entrepreneurship-promoting strategies are relevant to indices based on GII. The secondary data of the paper is collected directly from the Global Innovation Index Reports 2009–2017 and the regressions are calculated by the authors for both Oman and Qatar. In this study, Qatar, because of its international economic scores and rankings, has been assumed as a benchmark for comparing, evaluating and estimating the distances of the scores in each GII sub-index. After processing the data, the SWOT (SWOT is the acronym for an analysis of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis of Oman relative to Qatar was developed as a reference point. The findings show Oman has near scores to Qatar in institutional aspects and distant scores with Qatar in infrastructure indices. The analysis of innovation-based competitive advantage is longitudinal and embraces the span of time from 2009 to 2017. The research implication is that formulated strategies could be applied by the Omani decision-makers for the promotion of entrepreneurship and subsequently improving economic and social welfare in the Sultanate (The social implication could be the facilitation and promotion of the sultanate economy for the betterment of economic prosperity through effective entrepreneurship). Moreover, as one of the pioneering studies in this area, the originality and value of this paper lies in its application of GII sub-indices for the first time to formulate administrative strategies for the promotion of entrepreneurship in Oman. Finally, four strategies are suggested: Economic Diversification Strategy, Human Resources Upskilling Strategy, Economic Globalization Strategy and Economic Privatization Strategy. These are in accordance with Oman’s Vision 2020, and as such enhance economic diversification and the promotion of entrepreneurship in the Sultanate.