Innovation Overseas
how economic innovation can return prosperity to the Middle East. The first message is no more wars, which destroys infrastructure and diverts capital resources towards unproductive spending. In Chapter Four of a 2009 book “The Age of the Unthinkable,” Joshua Cooper Ramo has a chapter called “The Management Secrets of Hizb´allah.” While I´m
instinctively
against metaphors drawn from situations of extreme suffering, there is undoubtedly something for start-ups to learn from any case of asymmetric warfare. In the New York Times review of Ramo´s book an explicit connection is made: ”Today’s world,” he suggests, “requires resilient pragmatists who, like the most talented Silicon Valley venture capitalists on the one hand or the survival-minded leadership of
Hezbollah on the other, possess both an intuitive ability to see problems in a larger context and a willingness to rejig their organisations continually to grapple with ever-shifting challenges and circumstances.” We know that innovation often begins at the extremes – where there is a pressing need or an abundant opportunity. Right now the Arab world would seem to have both and their leaders are championing the movement.
Start-up Hubs
Making a list of start-up hubs is a sure way to lose friends though Beirut, Dubai and Amman. Also, within Israel, there are many programmes for Arab Israeli entrepreneurs. For example StarTau, a well known incubator in Tel Aviv, runs the MASAR (from Arabic:
“route”) forum. Both Beirut and Dubai benefit from multiculturalism and many Lebanese people are well educated in 3 different languages (English, French and Arabic). What’s more, the diaspora gives them close links with people and places all over the world.
The negatives are infrastructure (particularly telecoms) as well as the size of their domestic market. Beginning in the early 1970s, Dubai has succeeded in attracting people from all over the world, including many fleeing the Lebanese civil war. As the astonishing growth of recent years slows, the UAE government have established a number of regulatory entities to support entrepreneurs. It helps that successful entrepreneurs are heroes in Dubai, where magazines
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