The Bhutanese Leading the way.
On the final farewell dinner a foreign guest at the Bhutan Innovation Forum said he would be shedding tears on his flight.
His stay and experience in Bhutan deeply touched him.
Similarly the BIF was an eye opening experience for Bhutanese of all stripes attending it.
A senior civil servant remarked that ordinarily a civil servant would have to travel out just for one session to hear experts, but at the BIF there were multiple sessions.
Be it a Bhutanese or a foreign guest, anyone walking into the BIF forum would have come out a different person in outlook and ideas.
The BIF forum firstly served a practical purpose as it was a networking forum and several connections were established around the theme of Bhutan. There were even some deals that happened.
Then it was a source of important ideas on several areas that Bhutan is working on or interested in from GMC to AI to Big data.
Bhutan is a well-known country with a very positive international image, but it almost has a Shangri-La like quality in western and even eastern minds.
The BIF also served an important role of allowing important foreign guests to pierce through the clouds and know about the ideas and opportunities here in Bhutan.
They now know Bhutan is not just a holiday destination or something mystical but it has concrete business and investment opportunities to offer.
The forum was an important exposure for our leaders, senior bureaucrats, business people and others to a very wide world of leaders in their own fields.
As a foreign panelist commented, the fact that Bhutan had the convening power to get so many global experts from so many countries on one platform says something about the goodwill and pull that Bhutan enjoys.
The knowledge and experience gained from the BIF should not be wasted but it should be used as we take our own monumental steps ahead.
We should keep in touch with the foreign experts and use their expertise.
“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think”
Socrates