Pragmatic AI sovereignty: Architecting AI value chains for control and continuity in the Gulf countries

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

PwC Strategy&, August 31, 2026

by Chady Smayra, Ramzi Khoury, and Sreedhar Nair



Often, the quest to achieve leadership in the global competition that has arisen around artificial intelligence (AI) is reduced to seeking access to chips. But chips are only one component of the AI value chain. To attain a leadership position in AI, countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and beyond must adopt a more nuanced approach that encompasses the entire AI value chain, including chips, compute infrastructure, cloud platforms, models, data and other elements.

We call this pragmatic AI sovereignty. It seeks to balance the need for control over the AI value chain with the need for continuous access to its components. In doing so, pragmatic AI sovereignty mitigates the risks of both external dependence and internal fragility.

There is no single way to achieve pragmatic AI sovereignty. Government leaders and other stakeholders must consider each aspect of the value chain in terms of its concentration, capital intensity, strategic sensitivity and value creation potential.

Then, leaders can determine which posture or combination of postures can be used to secure access to the layers of value. There are four postures they can use: assure, which secures a layer via agreements, allocation, diversification or contractual safeguards; control, which secures a layer by owning, operating or governing it; partner, which secures a layer via partnership with a global player while maintaining local governance, localization, resilience and exit rights; and influence, which secures a layer using capital, regulation, procurement or market access to shape its standards, capital flows, supplier priorities or policy dialogues.

The GCC countries are well positioned to not only secure their own pragmatic AI sovereignty, but also shape how AI ecosystems evolve across adjacent markets. To succeed and lead in the AI era, they will secure access where it matters, assert control where it is critical and build leadership where value can be captured. Read the full viewpoint here.

‘Becoming a Principle-Driven Leader’ Review: Prosperity and Progress

The Wall Street Journal, August 12, 2026

by Theodore Kinni




Perhaps being a nepo baby isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Take Chase Koch, whose father, Charles, has long served as chairman of Koch, Inc., a conglomerate that generates more than $125 billion in annual revenue. The younger Mr. Koch, now an executive vice president at the family business, reports that his father made him undergo a capitalist’s education from a young age.

“Every Sunday,” Mr. Koch remembers, “my sister, Elizabeth, and I were required to listen to books on tape from the thinkers, doers, and dreamers” who had shaped their father’s “understanding of the world. . . . What ten-year-old wants to listen to lectures from Friedrich Hayek, Abraham Maslow, Thomas Sowell, and Milton Friedman?”

Readers get a taste of those Sundays in “Becoming a Principle-Driven Leader,” which Mr. Koch co-wrote with his 90-year-old father. The Kochs declare that 41 principles—a mix of legal and economic concepts ranging from property rights to marginal analysis—are responsible for the “nine-thousandfold” growth of the company since 1960 and, less plausibly, for human progress itself... read the rest here.

‘What to Make of a Life’ Review: Encoded for Success

The Wall Street Journal, July 23, 2026

by Theodore Kinni

In 1995, a year after co-writing a bestselling book on the habits of great companies, Jim Collins left the faculty of Stanford’s business school to found his own management lab. Over the course of his work, Mr. Collins became interested in how people create engaging lives for themselves. He shares his findings in “What to Make of a Life.”

The book examines luminaries in matched pairs from the worlds of music (Jimmy Page and Robert Plant), writing (Toni Morrison and Barbara W. Tuchman), politics (Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford) and more. Why such well-known people? Because “that’s where the data is,” Mr. Collins writes. He recounts his subjects’ accomplishments with an eye to exploring three questions that many of us have asked at some point. How do I find a path that is right for me? What do I do when my current path ends? How do I stay engaged over a lifetime? Read the rest here.

‘Superteams’ Review: Focused Collaboration

The Wall Street Journal, July 23, 2026

by Theodore Kinni

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, many leaders claimed that effective teamwork required remote workers to return to their cubicles. Ron Friedman begs to differ.

In “Superteams,” the social psychologist reports that high-performing teams are as likely to work well at home as in the office. “Far more important than where a team works is how it works,” he declares. What makes a great team? Mr. Friedman sought the answer by interviewing more than 6,000 professionals who say their teams are tops to find out what they do differently from the rest. He found that the members of these teams get more done, make one another better and are constantly improving. Read the rest here.

Built to compete: Business model reinvention for tech champions in the Middle East

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

PwC Strategy& Middle East, April 2026

By Achilles Drettas, Chady Smayra, Nikolaos Lioulis, and Ibrahim Moufarrej




Driven by innovation, customer needs, and government actions, the Gulf’s technology markets are growing and morphing at a dizzying pace. To win in this environment, tech company leaders must act, but they cannot simply chase the rapidly multiplying opportunities. Instead, they must reinvent themselves with intent by making deliberate, aligned choices about how they create, deliver, and capture value through business model reinvention (BMR).

BMR begins with strategic clarity. To become champions, tech companies need to formulate a distinctive way to play based on their inherent strengths and market dynamics. This requires making a set of clear, interdependent choices about how the company will compete, whom it will serve, what products and services it will offer, and how it will go to market.

Next, tech champions must ensure that the organizational capabilities required to execute the way to play are in place. Each way to play demands a distinct configuration of strengths across the realms of technology, talent, go-to-market, and delivery. When the right set of capabilities is intentionally developed and integrated, companies can turn strategic clarity into competitive advantage and then scale with confidence.

Finally, tech champions must design and implement an operating model that consistently enables the capabilities its strategy requires. The operating model defines decision rights, investment and resource allocation, governance and risk thresholds, performance metrics and incentives, core processes and enabling systems, and the operating cadence that shapes everyday behaviors. When these choices are properly aligned with the capability system, a way to play becomes a muscle memory within an organization.

In the Gulf’s fast-paced technology sectors, BMR delivers impact only when a company’s strategy, capabilities, and operating model are tightly aligned. This alignment is what separates technology champions from their competitors. Download the viewpoint here.

Making the Gulf countries’ big bets on building logistics hubs pay off

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

Logistics Middle East, March 2026

by Maha Raad, Hamza El Mounhi, and Massimo Campadese

Despite recent geopolitical turbulence and slowing economic growth, global trade is not retreating: it reached a record $33 trillion in 2024. However, global trade dynamics are fundamentally changing with trade routes emerging and shifting due to geopolitical tensions, intensified competition between trade blocs, and deeper regional supply chains, especially in the energy, automotive, advanced manufacturing, and technology sectors. These developments represent enormous opportunities for the GCC countries, where logistics play a crucial role in the achievement of economic transformations and national visions.

Sitting at the crossroads of Asia, Europe, and Africa, the GCC countries have a geographically commanding position in global trade. They already handle around 18% of global trade flows ($4.3 trillion in 2023). Dubai has established itself as a world-class logistics hub, and now, the other GCC countries are investing billions in their seaports, airports, and integrated supply chain capabilities. The success of their efforts to become hubs for global and regional trade and supply chains will depend not just on assets, but on strategy. Read the rest here.

Building with purpose: Five imperatives for shaping the cities of the future in the GCC

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PwC Strategy&, March 2026

by Marwan Bejjani, Elias Karam, Jean Aboueid, and Saad Iskandarani



Saudi Arabia’s giga developments, the repurposing of Qatar’s World Cup infrastructure, and other ambitious projects show that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have embarked on unprecedented visions of urban development. They are investing US$1 trillion to bring these visions to fruition. The returns they reap, however, will be determined not just by the magnitude of investment or dramatic new skylines, but by the long-term resilience and prosperity of the region’s cities. To meet the urban challenge, the GCC’s construction sector and government decision-makers need to consider five interrelated tensions. Each tension puts a different kind of pressure on cities. Read the rest here.

Meeting the compute imperative in the Gulf countries

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PwC Strategy&, January 2026

By Hani Zein, Fawaz Bou Alwan, Ali Ghaddar, and Mahsa Ettefagh

The Gulf’s AI journey is entering a transformative phase. AI is shifting from experimentation to scale, agentic systems are proliferating, and Gulf nations are building AI ecosystems featuring homegrown champions and local models, such as KSA’s Allam, UAE’s Falcon, and Qatar’s Fanar. This phase of AI development requires a critical enabler: sovereign compute processing power at scale. Now, Gulf nations must assess their future compute needs and act decisively to secure compute capacity.

AI is poised to become part of daily life in the Gulf. In healthcare for example, AI agents will review patient test results, suggest diagnoses, generate treatment plans, and manage patient journeys based on individual needs – updating records, scheduling follow-ups, and coordinating medication orders.

AI models are the heart of this transformation – and sustaining them requires vast processing power. The greatest demand for compute power will come from running models for real-time, low-latency inference. Compute will also be needed to build and train local models, and to fine-tune global models for regional and sector-specific applications.

To forecast how much compute power Gulf nations will require in the near term, we analyzed the volume of data that AI models will process — measured in model tokens, or small fragments of text, images, or other inputs – across training, fine-tuning and inference. We then translated this demand into the processing required (FLOPS, or floating-point operations per second) and the hardware needed to deliver it through GPUs. Our analysis reveals that the region will need 400,000 – 500,000 GPUs by 2028. Read the rest here.

Telecom Operators need a talent strategy to develop solution visionaries

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

TahawulTech.com, June 27, 2025

by Ramzi Khoury, Amar Akli, and Omar Nowaihed

GCC telecom operators can achieve significant growth in the business-to-business market. That business-to-business opportunity is appealing given the broader challenges facing telecom operators, such as the ongoing commoditization of their core services, intense competition, and rigid business models. To achieve this growth, telecom operators should collaborate with their business customers to deploy advanced digital solutions tailored to their industries and sectors.

That means becoming trusted advisors, problem-solvers, and essential partners in their business customers’ digital journeys. Telecom operators thereby can diversify revenues, protect earnings from connectivity, and become leaders in the region’s information and communication technology industry.

The market for advanced digital solutions, which combine technologies to transform businesses and deliver exceptional value, is substantial and growing fast. Mordor Intelligence estimates that this market will rise by 24.3% CAGR in the Middle East from 2025 to 2030, reaching $149 billion. Combined with the demand created by artificial intelligence (AI) and the GCC governments’ ambitious digital agendas, that presents an inviting opportunity for regional telecom operators.

Better yet, GCC telecom operators are uniquely positioned to succeed. They have nationwide infrastructures, serve a broad base of mobile and fixed subscribers, possess unrivalled market knowledge, and have demonstrated a long-term commitment to localization and GCC countries’ sovereignty priorities.

To put these advantages to work, telecom operators should become solution visionaries. Read the rest here.

The future of public-sector digital services: Achieving intelligent, cost-neutral service delivery

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

PwC Strategy&/Tawakkalna, June 2025

by Hani Zein, Karl Njeim, and Saleh Mosaibah

A key problem facing government service digitization today is the fragmentation produced by multiple, siloed applications that feature separate log-ins, inconsistent user interfaces, and redundant data submissions. This lack of integration results in operational inefficiencies, service delivery delays, and a disjointed experience that diminishes public trust in digital services at a time of rising expectations for seamless, intuitive, and personalized digital interactions—such as those offered by leading private-sector platforms.

For these reasons, efforts are being made to transform the delivery of government services into a single-access, seamless, and virtual constituent experience via one-stop digital channels in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. One-stop digital channels offer a host of benefits, including enhanced customer engagement and experience, automated service delivery, proactive services, enhanced decision-making, and more efficient fraud detection and prevention.

However, they also demand significant investment in IT infrastructure, interoperability frameworks, cybersecurity, user experience design, and such emerging technologies as artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain. Additionally, the creation of one-stop digital channels requires governments to digitize and modernize legacy systems, as well as automate existing processes. Thus, the challenge now facing GCC governments is to accelerate initiative time lines and continue to raise the level of digital service delivery in a cost-neutral manner. To meet this challenge, GCC governments should:

• Seek the consolidation of public services and establish a foundation for one-stop digital channels
• Centralize digital services in a manner that improves the citizen experience and benefits all participating government entities
• Adopt an open platform for service development that enables third parties to list existing services and co-create new services
• Exploit AI to improve service delivery across the service value chain and optimize software service development
• Use a cost-neutral approach to underwrite investments in one-stop digital channels through new revenue generation opportunities and public–private partnerships (PPPs) that bring market-driven approaches to service delivery and resource management

Read the rest here.

How to unlock your residential sales strategy to win in tomorrow’s market

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PwC Strategy&, June 2025

by Karim Abdallah, Joe Rached, Zahi Awad, and Maria Geagea




The surge in integrated mega projects in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries is heating up competition among residential real estate developers. Value propositions offering homebuyers distinctive designs and long lists of amenities have become commonplace. Developers need to find new ways to differentiate themselves from competitors, attract buyers, and optimize financial results. In this environment, a winning sales strategy is crucial for both survival and success.

The strong market for high-end residential real estate in the GCC countries is driven in large part by domestic demand for “branded” properties (built in alliance with a famous brand) and rising expatriate homeownership. During 2024, for example, the Saudi residential real estate market recorded a 38 percent increase in transaction volume and a 35 percent rise in transaction value.

The inventory needed to meet this demand is coming soon. Our review of new project announcements in locales such as Diriyah and the Red Sea, and by such developers as Dar Al Arkan and Roshn, shows that a substantial increase in residential units is in the works.

The challenge now facing developers is that many of them are targeting the same pool of middle- to high-income homebuyers. As more and more homes come onto the market, the features and amenities they offer will become increasingly commoditized—providing less opportunity for differentiation. Consequently, competition among developers will intensify.

Developers that want to win in this increasingly competitive residential real estate marketplace need to formulate and execute a sales strategy that strikes the optimal balance of pricing, financing, marketing, and differentiation to drive demand, move buyers through the sales funnel, and deliver sustained growth in an evolving market. This strategy should make full use of innovative tools and approaches, such as digital tokenization, which enhances the liquidity of real estate investments and brings more buyers to market.

A sales strategy for residential real estate developers needs to define the developer’s sales objectives and targets, the value proposition needed to achieve those objectives, the sales operating model, and the enablers that support the execution of the strategy (read the rest here).

Leadership by design: Lessons in mentorship success from Project1932 in Saudi Arabia

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PwC Strategy&/Project1932, June 2025

by Fadi Adra, Dr. Shihab Elborai, Chadi N. Moujaes, and Jana Yamani



As the large-scale transformation initiatives in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries come to fruition, they require newly skilled and expanded workforces and many new leaders. We estimate that economic diversification, advanced technologies, and the shift to knowledge-based work will create the need for an additional 700,000 top and middle managers in the region by 2030, which is 30 percent more than were required in 2024.

GCC governments have prioritized human capital development, principally through education reforms and workforce localization. These efforts have increased workforce participation of GCC nationals and women significantly. However, they are insufficient to equip young professionals with all the practical capabilities and soft skills necessary to meet the coming workforce requirements.

Mentorship programs, which draw upon the Arab world’s historical legacy of apprenticeship, can bridge that gap. When systematically structured and executed, mentoring fosters the functional and industry knowledge of emerging leaders, hones their acumen and soft skills, and prepares them for the technological advances shaping the future of work.

Findings drawn from Project1932, a Saudi-based initiative cultivating emerging leaders by connecting them with experienced mentors, indicate that the design of successful mentorship programs entails five elements and three enablers. The elements are shared purpose, synergistic matchmaking, a structured and relevant curriculum, mentoring for mentors, and community power. Successful programs are enabled by strong leadership, robust monitoring and evaluation systems, and coherent financial sustainability strategy.

Further, surveys and interviews of Project1932 participants have revealed five insights for fostering mentoring success. Successful programs challenge mentees to leave their comfort zones, train mentors in active listening so they can provide tailored guidance, build strong mentor–mentee relationships, encourage calculated risk taking, and empower mentees to question the status quo.

Project1932 demonstrates that systematic mentorship programs conducted at scale can bridge the GCC’s gap between leadership demand and supply. Read the rest here.

Capturing the AI advantage through culture change

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Oil Review Middle East, May 30, 2025

by James Thomas, Shantanu Gautam, and Pavel Evteev



The GCC’s national oil companies (NOCs) must put AI to work if they are to keep delivering the world’s lowest cost and lowest carbon footprint barrels. To achieve this, NOCs need organisational cultures that can quickly produce many small, high-impact artificial intelligence (AI) applications.

AI-powered solutions are the next major cost and efficiency frontier in the oil and gas industry. Leading oil majors are already using them to produce oil faster, at lower cost and resource intensity. For example, AI can accelerate subsurface analysis, reduce uncertainty, and optimise capital allocation. Shell partnered with startup Avathon (formerly SparkCognition) and is using AI-powered deep learning to reduce seismic shots by 99%, maintaining image accuracy while cutting exploration time from nine months to just nine days.

Beyond exploration, AI is transforming well planning, automating drilling, predicting conditions, and streamlining workflows. ExxonMobil, collaborating with IBM, used AI to reduce well planning and design time from nine to seven months, and cut data preparation time by 40%.

Drilling optimisation is another area seeing major gains. AI can now analyse real-time downhole data, optimise rate of penetration, and predict failures. Machine learning can adjust drilling parameters dynamically, reducing non-productive time, cutting costs, and improving well economics. ConocoPhillips used three years of drilling data to develop a machine learning model that improved vertical rate of penetration by 20% and reduced premature drilling-motor failures by 65% – saving US$30,000 per well.

Environmental performance is improving too. AI can track emissions in real time, detect leaks, and increase carbon capture. Chevron deployed AI to optimise methane emissions reduction in upstream operations, helping cut methane emission intensity by 60%.

NOCs across the region are also making tangible progress in applying AI to boost performance. Aramco, for example, deployed 40,000 sensors across 500 wells, enabling AI-driven process control that increased production by 15% and halved troubleshooting time. ADNOC’s Emission X tool helped abate 1 million tonnes of CO2 in one year through AI-powered emissions prediction and optimisation. Read the rest here.

Caring for the Carers: Investing in healthcare workforce wellbeing

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

PwC Strategy& Middle East, May 2025

by Irfan Merali, Dr. Christelle Abou Nader, and Andrew AlHamouch

The health of the GCC’s population depends on the wellbeing of its healthcare workforce. It is a key lever for improving the quality of care provided by the region’s 800,000 healthcare professionals, and for reducing the cost of care. Our analysis indicates that improving healthcare workforce wellbeing in the GCC countries potentially could generate US$ 2.5 billion in annual savings.

Healthcare is a rewarding and demanding profession. Long hours, high intensity work environments, and physically demanding tasks contribute to elevated incidences of chronic fatigue, musculoskeletal injuries, and other health problems. Nearly half of healthcare workers globally suffer from burnout. Almost as many experience musculoskeletal issues each year. We find comparable rates in the GCC’s healthcare systems.

These conditions harm healthcare workers and patients. Mental and physical wellbeing challenges drive up absenteeism, turnover, and job dissatisfaction, all of which increase medical errors, lower patient satisfaction, and diminish compassionate care. Research into the effects of burnout among doctors, for example, shows that it is associated with a fourfold decrease in job satisfaction. Doctors experiencing burnout are 2.2 times more likely to have made a recent medical error. Thus, current conditions foster a vicious cycle with systemic and financial repercussions.

As these conditions worsen, healthcare systems become increasingly stretched, with workforce shortages intensifying these pressures. The wellbeing of the GCC’s healthcare workforce is a large-scale issue with system-wide implications that should be investment priorities. Evidence-based research proves that investing in healthcare worker wellbeing yields tangible benefits, including a 17% reduction in absenteeism, an 11% decrease in turnover, and productivity gains of up to 25%. Read the rest here.

The Personalization Imperative: Driving telecom growth with AI-powered marketing

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

PwC Strategy& Middle East, April 2025

by GP Singh, Mahmoud Makki, Tarek Matar, and Ankit Kushwaha




Customers in every industry are demanding personalized, real-time engagement across channels, whether it is social media, mobile apps, or retail stores online and offline. They expect to be uniquely understood in the moment.

Marketers know that personalization is critical to relevance and differentiation, revenue growth, and brand value. Leaders are tackling this challenge head-on. First, they are gathering massive, proprietary data sets of customer information. Unilever, for example, is on a mission to create 1 billion one-on-one customer relationships by analyzing interactions across digital and in-store touch points for marketing insights. Second, such leaders are creating integrated marketing technology (MarTech) stacks to enable real-time personalization. McDonald’s integrated its MarTech to deliver personalized drive-through menus, mobile app offers, and in-store experiences, increasing its digital customer frequency by 10 percent and raising customer spending. Third, these leaders are exploiting real-time insights to get their concept into the market faster. Such agility allowed Coca-Cola to quickly move from a concept to the production of personalized bottles and cans in its “Share a Coke” campaign, which it launched in Australia and then expanded globally, and grow sales by 2.5 percent in a year in the competitive U.S. market.

Telecom operators are uniquely positioned to fulfill the personalization imperative. Their data sets, which include real-time location data, usage patterns, and customer service interactions, are broader and richer than those of industries such as finance or retail.

The problem is that many telecom operators are struggling to tap this gold mine of insights. In many cases, they are unable to deliver the right offer at the right place and the right time to their customers. We find that telecom companies typically utilize only 30 to 50 percent of their data. Senior telecom executives worry that disconnected MarTech stacks and skills gaps are holding them back.

Data-fueled, AI-powered marketing engines can unlock the potential for personalization. Such engines can produce the insights needed for personalized engagement, promote more informed decisions, and create the precision targeted strategies needed to enhance returns and deliver competitive advantage. Our analysis shows that for telecom companies in the early stages of their customer value management (CVM) journey, every $1.00 invested in AI-powered, data-fueled marketing can yield up to $5.90 in EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) gains over five years. (Read the rest here.)

Film and beyond: Leapfrogging into the global screen industry

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

BroadcastPro Middle East, February 5, 2025

by Tarek Matar, Karim Sarkis and Maansi Sagar



Ongoing transformation in the global screen industry has created an opportunity for GCC countries to establish themselves as prominent players. As the industry grapples with the future of content creation and the demands of a global audience, the combination of an appetite for investment in state-of-the-art technologies and media hubs, a focus on attracting investors and producers, a young and digitally-savvy workforce, and a culture rich with stories and landscapes could enable the GCC region to become a centre of cinematic innovation. Success in this endeavour will require a collaborative effort between governments and the private sector to bridge the silos of geography, technology and media industry verticals.

The screen industry, which has expanded beyond movies and movie theatres, is facing the uncertainties that accompany the impact of new technologies on its production value chain, particularly GenAI (simply defined here as artificial intelligence that can generate video content from text, image and video prompts). Video tools like Runway and Meta’s Movie Gen, along with virtual production and other advancements, are raising questions: Will content be generated versus filmed? Will soundstages and physical locations still be needed? What talent and skills will be essential? How will budgets and timelines be affected?

Creatives are soul-searching. Infrastructure investors are hesitating. Media conglomerates are experimenting. Big Tech is pouring billions into new tools. Yet the value is there to be captured. Strategy& forecasts that global video revenues – cinema, OTT services and TV – will increase by approximately $165bn to $564bn by 2028.

Simultaneously, audience and economic dynamics are changing, driven by shifting viewer preferences and industry budgetary pressures. Audiences are fuelling demand for locally-produced content as they search beyond the once-dominant Hollywood-centric model in search of relatable storytelling, cultural representation and authentic experiences. Film producers must do more with less as distribution and streaming platforms focus on profitability and tighten their budgets, thus making cheaper international content more appealing.

This uncertainty and the changing dynamics create an opportunity for the GCC’s forward-leaning economies to position themselves as a global film production hub with five actions. Read the rest here.

Redefining the social contract: Policy options for economic inclusion and fiscal sustainability

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

PwC Strategy& Middle East, January 2025

by Chadi N. Moujaes, Sami Zaki, Mitcha Sleiman and Dr. Steffen Hertog

Following the 1970s oil boom, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)1 countries developed a generous welfare model offering a wide range of benefits to nationals, including public-sector employment, energy subsidies, a variety of non-means-tested categorical benefits, and free public services such as education and healthcare. Governments now understand that this implicit social contract needs reform, given fiscal constraints and demographic pressures. 

Although GCC governments are responding to this challenge, thus far reforms have been piecemeal. Creating a new social contract requires simultaneous fiscal reform, welfare modernization, and labor policy changes. Moreover, governments need to design and implement the contract components specifically for each country’s needs. 

There are five policy tools that GCC governments can consider as they redesign their social contracts, described below: 

• Permanent income supplements for lower earners can make private-sector employment more attractive to nationals. Such income support ensures that the shift away from public-sector employment does not result in “working poor.” 

• Active labor market policies, including lifelong learning, job services, and training, can support nationals’ integration into the private sector. 

• Universal basic income (UBI) can provide all nationals with income security, while maintaining incentives for private-sector entrepreneurship and work. 

• Means-tested social benefits can support those that need it most, while reducing welfare dependency and fraud. 

• Integration of foreign residents through dedicated welfare tools, such as a modest minimum wage, can attract and ensure a ready workforce of foreigners, while reducing the differential in labor rights and costs that discourages employers from hiring nationals.

A new social contract in GCC countries can provide opportunities to all nationals, guarantee basic welfare for all, incentivize and improve the rewards for private economic activity, ensure fiscal sustainability, and minimize economic distortions. Read the full report here.

Don’t Confuse Ambition With Effective Leadership

Insights by Stanford Business, January 15, 2025

by Theodore Kinni



There’s an old saw — cribbed from Plato and popularized by Douglas Adams — that those people who are most interested in leading others are least suited to the task. That’s not entirely accurate, yet new research has found a grain of truth in this idea: Many leaders have plenty of ambition to lead, but that’s no guarantee others think they’re effective.

“Our society assumes that there is a link between leadership ambition and leadership aptitude,” explains Francis Flynn, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business. People seeking power and success step up to take leadership roles, and how we select leaders rewards that ambitiousness. “We largely rely on opt-in mechanisms to populate our pools of potential leaders — the people who apply to business schools like Stanford or seek a promotion to the next level in their organizations,” Flynn says. “That assumes implicitly that those people who want to lead are the ones who should lead. But is that assumption valid?”

Though it is clear that ambition plays a significant role in who becomes a leader, its link to leadership effectiveness has not been extensively studied. So Flynn, with Shilaan Alzahawi and Emily S. Reit, PhD ’22, undertook the first systematic study of that relationship. Read the rest here.

ASX 100 CFOs Unlocked: Identifying the Leadership Advantage that counts

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

Spencer Stuart, December 2024

by Jean E. Chiswick and Lucy Smith-Stevens




A senior leadership position, one pivotal to company performance, has undergone a profound shift.

Today’s chief financial officer (CFO) must influence beyond financial issues and offer cross-enterprise leadership on a range of different challenges. The role requires strong communication — someone able to seamlessly switch from internal to external audiences on a range of contemporary industry themes. They have to deftly navigate opportunities and risks, juggle a myriad of stakeholders and be co-pilot to the chief executive, working shoulder to shoulder in many cases, both inside and outside of the company.

No wonder the CFO so often looms large as a strong candidate when a CEO succession is underway.

But it’s not always smooth sailing.

The last two years have been pockmarked by a variety of economic challenges, increased complexity and ambiguity, as well as intense geopolitical disruption. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we have observed a shift in ASX 100 CFOs appointed with more proven CFO track records, classical accounting backgrounds and established credibility in public markets.

Does this mark a return to linear pathways to ASX 100 CFO succession? Well, not necessarily. We have found that 25% of internal CFO promotions have had exposure to P&L or operational leadership positions. This shows that breadth of experience is still important.

With more proven CFOs appointed in ASX 100 CFO positions, coupled with growing CEO succession from CFO roles, one thing is clear: an experienced CFO is the leadership advantage that counts. (Read the rest here.)

GCC economies must plot their way to $1 trillion in non-oil exports

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Gulf News, December 9, 2024

by Rasheed Eltayeb, Chadi Moujaes, Paul Saber, and Sohaib Dar



GCC governments are making progress in reducing their reliance on oil revenues and building an export base of high-value-added goods and services. To accelerate the shift away from oil exports to non-commoditized goods and services, GCC countries can expand their industrial base beyond petrochemicals, support high productivity sectors, and enter competitive markets.

Exports of non-oil goods have grown by a compound annual growth rate of 2% over the past ten years. The World Bank’s latest Gulf Economic Update estimates that GCC non-oil GDP growth reached 3.9% in 2023, while oil-generated revenues contracted by the same percentage.

With the correct measures, we estimate that GCC countries could accelerate this growth and increase total 2022 non-oil exports worth $202 billion to $1 trillion annually by 2030. Our $1 trillion figure comes from: past export growth, GCC countries’ revealed comparative advantage (RCA) in key export sectors (which means they sell abroad significant amounts from that sector), and extrapolating top quartile export growth manifested by global benchmarks.

To capture this prize, GCC policymakers can take three sets of actions. (Read the rest here.)