2010: The Year of Innovation and Entrepreneurs in the Middle East
What a year it has been in the Middle East! Let’s start with the good news…
- Qatar Airways completed the world’s first commercial passenger flight powered by natural gas.
- The fully automated Dubai Metro became the first urban train network in the Middle East.
- And in Saudi Arabia, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology opened its doors. Called “an oasis of freedom,” the university aims to fund research that will spawn economic diversity for Saudi.
2009 has truly been a year of breakthrough achievements in the Middle East. It’s also been a year of disappointments. Who could imagine that the bottom would fall out of the real estate market in most of the Middle East? Or that unemployment would rise and workers without a stake in the Gulf countries would flee, leaving their debts unpaid? Or that Dubai World would need a $26 billion bailout?
Yet, as disastrous as these situations may seem, they provide an unprecedented opportunity for growth in the region…the growth of innovation and entrepreneurs. 2010 could finally be the year that start-ups and companies investing in innovative products, services, business models and management come into serious play in the Middle East. The conditions are ripe. Read the rest of this entry »
Are You Turning into Deadwood?
Let’s imagine that in an effort to reduce your household expenses, you decided to cancel your Internet access for a year. What do you think will happen? Think about how much time you and your family spend on the Internet. Not just playing games and fooling around, but keeping in touch with family and friends, working, studying, reading, learning, etc.
Now imagine you had no Internet access for one year. How out of touch would you be with what is going on in the world? Would your children fail in school? Would you become “deadwood” floating around with no direction? Read the rest of this entry »
Enemy inside the Gate: The Number One Barrier to Innovation in the Middle East
What are the drivers for innovation in the Middle East? I recently asked this question of my colleagues in the social mediasphere. I wanted to better understand how people innovate in the Middle East, and compare the drivers for innovation here with that of other societies.
My question provoked many responses, several of which pointed to one underlying driver – necessity. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. However, necessity is the most basic driver for innovation. Many other societies have moved beyond necessity. Read the rest of this entry »
The Most Valuable Commodity on Earth
Performance management guru Peter Drucker once noted that the greatest contribution of management in the 20th century was the 50-fold increase in manual work productivity. For the current century, Drucker calls upon management to similarly increase the productivity of knowledge employees.
How can we answer this call? Not by simply acquiring knowledge, but by sharing knowledge with each other. Knowledge sharing is the first step to enabling the workers of today to succeed in business. Read the rest of this entry »
