 Welcome to this panel and thank you for coming. You know, every day in the news we read about challenges to the economic environment and to business. Globally it's the fourth industrial revolution and the challenges that it brings to the way that we do business, the business practices, and about robots taking over human jobs, about technology disrupting the way that companies operate, disrupting markets, disrupting industries and sectors. But also in the region we hear about conflicts in a number of major countries in the region. We hear about transformation, destabilized systems that are probably on the way to stability, but we have to live through a period of instability until then. Certainly a lot of chaos in certain regions and a lot of opportunities in others. And together with that we find all the traditional, conventional, acute crises that we've been living in the Arab world from political issues to governance issues and to the youth bulge which has continued to be a bulge for a very long while and we haven't yet realized the potential of that. So in the light of all of that we still need to sustain business and to grow it. And to discuss these ideas and what kind of leadership we need to lead business into the future, we have actually a stellar group of panelists. I'll start with Paul Rogers, the managing director of Bain for the Middle East region and Turkey, and he was managing their global practice for a very long while too. We also have Najla Mitfa, who's an entrepreneur, started a company called Khairat to build capacity in Emirati entrepreneurs but also equally importantly she is building the ecosystem of entrepreneurship in Sharjah through Shira. We also have Yadil Qassar, a computer science PhD who's running the internet, the rocket internet group of companies in the Middle East. Rocket internet is for you that are not familiar with it, it's a company that builds internet companies. And we also have Fahder Rashid who is the group CEO of the King Abdullah Economic City in Saudi Arabia and the founding chairman of the Red Sea Foundation which is an NGO that's developing the economic relations within the Red Sea Basin. So with all these questions and myself, I'm Abdul Salam Haikal, I run the Haikal Group which includes businesses in media and technology. And one of our publications in media, the Harvard Business Review is responsible for co-designing this panel, the Arabic edition of Harvard Business Review. So I'll go to Paul with the first question. So challenges inside, challenges outside, regional, things that apply globally and we still need business. When you meet with your clients, governments, business, do you see the sort of leadership that is needed to lead business into the future? Okay, well thank you and good afternoon. So the short answer is I'm very optimistic. I've been in the region for two years and I do see a lot of leadership facing into issues. But the question beyond that and I think the question of the session is what leadership is needed in the future in the region. And I think it's definitely true that the more challenging and turbulent the times, the more leadership is necessary and valuable, leaders really do set the toe. If we think about what characterizes great leadership, there's much been written on this. I'm going to try and condense this down into a few sentences, but vision and values, it never goes out of fashion. It's a cliche I know, but the ability to set direction but also set a behavioral tone that people can use to regulate their own behavior. There's some very interesting research I saw recently about what followers look for in a leader and they look for two things based on this research, which is competence and empathy. And I think if we think about the challenges in the region and in the world more generally, and we think about the next 10 or 20 years, that won't be any different. People will still look for competence and empathy, but what it takes to be competent and the kind of empathy, that's going to be different. And competence really is about driving to good decisions and driving to action around those decisions. But in a data-rich age, big data, social media, the ability to use that information constructively to improve the quality of decisions and manage to tune out the noise and the fake news, that's going to be a really important quality in a leader. The ability to have the judgment as to when to stay the course with everything that's going on and when to adapt, that's going to be huge. And then when it comes to empathy, that is about listening and connecting at a human level, but increasingly it's about inspiring the next generation, the millennials. And it's about not necessarily commanding in the way that leaders of the past perhaps did, but actually helping, it's more coaching than controlling. It's more helping people find the answers in themselves rather than finding them for them. And my last point is some things don't change and I think the capacity for self-reflection in an uncertain world is a really important characteristic of a leader. And I think it was Socrates that said those that want to govern others must first learn how to govern themselves. And I think that that's just going to be as true in the next 10 or 20 years as it ever has been. So yes, I see many of those qualities. I don't, for a moment, I mean, there are some very big challenges. Success is not guaranteed, I wouldn't say. But I'm personally quite optimistic about what I observe in the leadership that I get the privilege of working with in terms of the willingness to face the issues and demonstrate some of these qualities. Excellent. So I'm going to come back to you on a couple points that you mentioned. But before that, I'd like to build on another point you mentioned, which is the quality of the qualities that followers look for in a leader. And I want to ask Nizla because she works with young people and she works with millennials. And a lot of people actually don't know what millennials want. So what do millennials look for in a leader? Yeah, I should start that by saying I'm definitely not a millennial, but I'm happy to echo the thoughts of millennials. I interact with them on a daily basis. But before I start, let me take a step back and talk a little bit about Shara'a. It's really a proud moment for us to be here at WEF because two years ago, Sheikh Abdul Qasmi, who is also a participant here at WEF, was taking part in the WEF MENA Forum and was on a panel called the Youth Dividend. And she talked about the need to build a platform to support youth and to encourage them in their ventures. And two years later, here we are, that platform now exists. It ended up being called Shara'a Charger Entrepreneurship Center. And more interestingly, we actually have our first cohort of graduates of young entrepreneurs that have graduated from Shara'a. And we've brought two of them with us to WEF. And one of them is in the room here, who is Hashim al-Zaabi. So it's a really proud moment. And in our efforts to build Shara'a, we obviously were based at the American University of Sharjah. So we're based in the heart of a campus. And so we really get a chance to kind of keep our finger on the pulse of what millennials are looking for and what they're talking about. And based on what I've seen and what millennials are looking for in terms of leadership, in terms of learning, is firstly, yes, I agree, empathy. So I think that's definitely something that they are looking for in terms of people that relate to them, are willing to communicate with them. They've gone away. So when I think back to my time, when I graduated many years ago, the first thing I was looking for when I was looking for a job was to be associated with a big brand name. You know, my first job was actually at PWC. And that's really what I was looking for. Things have changed so much since then. They're no longer in being associated with a big brand name. They want to be associated with people. They want to be associated with impact. They want to be associated with organizations, irrespective of size, that will encourage them to learn and to grow. And so that's what we've seen with the millennials. And I completely agree with Paul's statement that one of the most important aspects of leadership is vision and values. And these are some of the values that we aspire to embody at Sharjah. Because if we are talking about supporting the millennials and supporting youth in their own ventures, then we need to embody those values as well. And so I think we can always take some thoughts from Hashem. He's sitting in the audience. But certainly what we aspire to do is to really allow our programs, our curriculum to be student-led, to be youth-led, rather than us telling them, this is what you need to do. This is what you need to learn. We actually want to hear from them what they want to learn. We give them a sense of agency in that sense. And more importantly, we're open to learning from them. I mean, everything I know about blockchain I've learned from Hashem, you know? So again, we have to have this open dialogue constantly with the youth rather than speaking at them. In fact, I always say that youth need to be part of these discussions and on the panel with us. But these are a few of the thoughts that I have noticed from my interaction with the youth. Excellent. Now we can give actually the floor to Hashem and Noah, if they want to say something. It's going to be an interactive session. So thank you. Thank you, Najla. I'm going to move to Fahad and I'm going to ask you, you're actually building a new city. How does that feel, first of all? Push-ups. Good. Good. And you're good at push-ups. So my question to you is that when we talk about vision and values and all the challenges the region is facing, the world is facing, de-globalization, the rethinking capitalism, and so on. And you're someone that started a foundation that could create opportunities across the sea from you and also within the basin of the Red Sea. Is the business of business only business or is there a non-business side of business? So I was really worried about being here and talking about this in front of all of you. First of all, because this is something I'm super passionate about. And second of all, and truly, I don't know the answer to it. Because I was trained as a capitalist in two business schools in the U.S. And what you're supposed to do as a business is actually focus on creating shareholder value. And that notion is being challenged by two currents, if you will. There's one current, I think it's an article actually published at the HBR, about whether the agent owner theory actually, you know, the theory says that the manager is an agent of the owner and therefore they should be maximizing the owner's value in the company, right? And so the question whether a public shareholder today that owns a share with you is an actual owner. What does this mean? The theory basically espouses the idea that the owner is unified, so they all have one objective. Second, that they are long-term investors. So they are really thinking about the long-term. And this drives this idea whether companies should be investing for the long-term and projects that might or might not work or should be cash cows. Basically pay out what you can now. And thirdly, that the owners that carry a share have a legal liability, which they don't. It's actually the board representing the owners and the manager that have legal liability. So the idea was sparked by this challenge. The second is what Paul Paulman is doing at Unilever saying that their business should not only be socially responsible but should be socially proactive in solving societal problems. And so when I go to my job and we invest in education, because I think that in a city you have to have great education. So we subsidize education at the K through 12. We create scholarships at our Mohammed bin Salman Business School. When it comes to the arts and culture we sponsor all of these events. Sustainability, women empowerment question is how much of my time and my resources should go to things that are socially important? And how much of it is, oh this is Fahad's next pet project. He just loves this so we do it. You know, what is the right formula benchmark for us in the corporate world to take on as responsible leaders? And how much it is for us not to do because it is not our role as business leaders to lead that. It's a question that I hope we would debate today so I don't have an answer for that. Excellent, excellent. So before I move to Ead, I want to ask Paul a question. I think you wrote one of a timeless article for HBR 10 or 11 years ago. The title was Who Has the D? And I remember the opening paragraph and it says regardless of how well you know who you are, how well you know the product, regardless of the sector and how smart your strategy is, if you don't make the right decisions then your company is going to die. Do you think we're making the right decisions? And I'm asking you because you're a consultant that deals with people that come for help or for advice. So the article is Who Has the D? Who has the authority to make the decision? So it's really hard to answer the question you asked about are we making the right decisions because obviously some are and some aren't the answer. If I can bring it back to the qualities of leadership, I think it's a really important question you're asking because it's very easy and perhaps I did this earlier to get lost in sort of abstract notions of leadership. And ultimately it does boil down to making good decisions and making them happen, right? The best leaders get things done and it's really how, as I said before, if you think about the complexities of the world and the region and the next sort of 20 years as opposed to the last 20 years which were already complex enough, it's this ability to synthesize lots of data into on average high quality decisions, the right decisions, but it's also ability to mobilize millennials to get things done which requires a different style of leadership to what we've seen in the past and again at the risk of oversimplifying it's a move away from command and control to a more empowered style. So I think the centrality of a definition of a good leader kind of by definition is that for the decisions that really matter they get made right and they get well executed. That's timeless but what it takes to make good decisions in tomorrow's world and to get them executed in tomorrow's world is a very different proposition from what it was in the past. So you've built digital businesses here in e-commerce digital services and there's a newly found drive in the region that even conventional business should become digital. So is it possible actually to change the DNA of a company or do you have to start with a fresh DNA as digital? So I believe you can't change companies, you can't change people. I think leadership or change is not coming by convincing people about ideas. It's about waiting until they die away and you do something better. There is this very well-known science researcher, Kuhn, which basically said like no scientific breakthrough ever happened by the young scientists convincing the old scientists that this is a good idea. When the relativity theory came, Einstein was I think 25 years old, very young and all the old physicians said, this is bullshit. That's crap who needs this relativity stuff. He didn't convince them. They died away because they were old guys. I think in the Arab world this is even more important. We should wait until all these old guys die away, I hope nobody's here. Don't waste your time with convincing. Do this thing, so I think that's a learning. We came to the Middle East seven years ago, six years ago. We said like e-commerce, it's great, we know in America it works. We were super enthusiastic young guys who didn't understand anything and we went to the big groups here and they said, no, we have malls. People never buy online, they have malls. Like guys, online is the next big thing. It's much easier, it's much better. They said, yeah, maybe it's a channel for us later to make some marketing. Now they are being killed away. They are dying. The big groups are dying. Big retail groups are dying and they are moving like crazy into because they think this is the last chance they can get into digital. So my advice and my learning is don't waste your time with old people. Don't waste your time with convincing, you're not old. You can find old, what is old? That's a good question. I think old means people who have grown up in a certain system and a certain thinking, that is very hard to change. Relativity theory, I think a good example again. These people were very smart, like the physicians of this time were very smart physicians, mathematicians in Germany and so on. They said it's bullshit. It was obvious that it's actually the right thing to do. But they grew up over 40, 50 years in this kind of system of thinking and they were there and they were stuck there. So I think that's not only true for business, I think that's true for politics in the same way, especially in this region. It's really about what you have to do is you have to do it better. At the end, success will show it to you. It's not like, again, don't wait. You are 22, 23, 24. Honestly, everybody will tell you in these kind of forums, you will learn so much and there are tutors and mentors and this and that. It's all to press you into structure to do exactly the same as people were doing before. You have to change and there is no time in history of mankind where you have so much means, so much power as today. I give you an example. YouTube, yeah. Three guys founded the company. They build a TV station which is reaching billions of people around the globe and they didn't invest into a single satellite or cable or anything. Everything is there. You can be sitting in your home in Dubai, in Riyadh, in Jeddah, in Basra, in Baghdad and you can control thousands of servers. You can control an infrastructure that is billion worth. You can build a company that is reaching billions of people and giving services to it and you are like an 18-year-old guy who just learned how to code and do a program. This was never in the history of mankind. This is so much power, so don't believe all the people who tell you you need to meet and network and all this stuff. You have to do it. I think we have all the power and we have to change the other people. Wait until they die. Don't wait. Just do it. I like your provocation. It's kind of a sweet spot for you because you are the disruptor today. Do you have a vision of a time where you could be disrupted? How are you going to try and avoid that? Yes, when I get old. I think what we also learn in the digital business, it's always good to have small units. Why is Amazon not Walmart? Why didn't Walmart become the Amazon? Because they had the retail and all this stuff. Why are all these new companies not like extension of old companies? It's not GE who did Facebook. It's not like the big media companies who did the internet companies. The reason for that is because if you're young, you have less to lose, so you start more aggressively. Usually big organizations, there's a lot of politics in. There's a lot of competition in terms of what is my area and the areas of others. It's not because they are bad, they are big companies. They don't go into disruptives. They don't disrupt, but they already have something that is generating money for them. That is good for them. It's like politicians. If I'm a ruler of a country, I'm already a ruler of a country. I don't need to prove to anybody. I have to maintain what I have. The disruptive guys don't have to maintain. They have nothing to lose. They have to gain something. There's always a risk. If you build an organization without having site organizations, where you can get people who have nothing to lose and can build competitive disruptive ideas. Very interesting. This is the post-oil era. That's big news for a country like Saudi Arabia. And, gladly, you have the very bold and visionary vision 2030. What do you think the shifts that are needed, not only in Saudi Arabia, but probably in the region, and I know that you have your footprint in a lot of places, what are the shifts that are necessary to happen as the vision 2030 and the likes in other countries in the region start to take hold? The shifts in leadership, and how you implement these strategies? I think we have, and it's very well documented, many challenges in the region, but ultimately you have three actors that can do it. It's either government, non-for-profit, or for-profit. If we take the government of Saudi Arabia as having figured it out with vision 2030, I believe in the vision, although we might agree or disagree on the tactics, but most of us agree with the direction, I would say that the biggest challenge to it is actually private sector embrace of this vision and actually participating in a true way, and moving from a renter economy, because they are mostly renter companies, to companies that actually invest in the country's future. And Ghassan Kipsi and I were on the panel yesterday, he used this word existential, which I really like, I've been using it all day. I actually think the challenges that we are facing in the region on employment are existential, and unless the private sector participates and doesn't say, this is just a job of government and we have nothing to do with it, we will be disrupted as a private sector and what we're building would not work. And I see unfortunately a lot of despair, a lot of the hoping that things will go back to the high oil prices, 10 million barrels that are being pumped, the government will go back and procure contracts. Again, we've built everything already. We have way too many universities, way too many stadiums, too much railway. It is time for the private sector to take on economic development and address some of the challenges that we have in the economy. Excellent. So I'm going to ask Nestle one last question and then we're going to move to the audience and open the floor. So Nestle, I chaired a meeting, a new initiative for university presidents this morning and one made, I think, a very, very remark that they always wanted to be the harvests, the MITs. This is the vision that they had and Dr. Koshak is here and he was in the meeting and someone said, I think he's also here, Kareem said it's the age of having global aspirations but you need to act locally and you need to be really entrenched in the local culture and understand the nuances and deliver to the needs that these nuances create. So you're entrepreneurs and this is a syndrome that I see across the Arab world is that we want to be the next unicorn, we want to be the next billion-dollar company and we want to have, we need to scale up to reach continents and so on. What do entrepreneurs that come to start in Shira'a want to do? Do they want to do conventional business, digital? Do they want to start local? What do you see in that space? So we see a good mix. So if I take the first cohort that graduated from Shira'a, there were 10 teams. The average age in the first cohort was about 25 years old and 70% of the businesses were tech-enabled businesses. 30% were, I would say, either social enterprises or more classic SMEs. And again, we don't want to disencourage people who do come up with the more conventional ideas. They can still become sustainable businesses that not only employ themselves but also create jobs for others, nothing wrong with that. But one of the things that I think I can say across the board for the region, actually, not just Charger or the UAE, is that I still think that ambition isn't quite there. I mean, I was in Silicon Valley a couple of weeks ago. And I think the one thing I felt over there is a sense of anything is possible. And I think that's still missing in the region. They are trying, but even the ideas are kind of limited in scope. Perhaps they're thinking towards the UAE's borders may be regional, but they're rarely thinking about coming up with ideas that can be world-changing or that can be exported to the world. And I think this is something that we really need to change. And I think it's starting to change. So now that we have examples like Souq.com, like Kereem, and so on, we actually have role models. So rather than us having to point to Mark Zuckerberg in Facebook and say, look, he did it, we actually have regional examples that we can point to and invite to speak to the students. So I think across the board in general, I would say the majority are leaning towards tech businesses. Some are leaning towards conventional businesses. Like I said, nothing wrong with that, but I still think we need to raise our ambitions in general and encourage them to dream bigger. And I think that's the role of a place like Shiraah. Aside from, yes, fine, we give them the skills that are necessary, access to a little bit of finance. But primarily, it's that ability to hope and to really dream big is the role that we play. And I think sometimes, and it's perhaps a sensitive point for me to bring this up if you're telling me that people from universities are in the room, but I do think that sometimes universities kill those ambitions. I think the education system really needs to change. It's something that I've always believed academically speaking, but now that I'm in the middle of a university and I see it for myself, the system is broken. It just needs to change completely. So I often say that if you give me these students, when they're coming into university, and I take them straight into Shiraah rather than down there, the course that they've chosen, I can guarantee you a better outcome in one year rather than the four-year courses that they're doing. So I do think there's a lot of room for change. Very satisfied. I think actually if by the time you're 18, most of our Arab youth don't know where they are, what they want to do, that's okay in general. But the problem is there's nowhere to go. So if you cannot carry your own self at 18, knowing how to get yourself into university or to go to vocational training or knowing what you want and helping yourself, the education system has already failed you, in my opinion. And I think that in the Arab world as leaders, we don't take responsibility. What if we decided, each one of us here, that given all the opportunities that we've had that we're going to help 10 other people in some meaningful way from mentoring to scholarships to training on the job, I think we will have a much different world if we all do that, especially in the Arab world. So I'll go back to the panel and ask them later on who's connecting the dots between tactical strategies to make some quick wins and some of the generational transformations that are happening. For example, empowering through education, empowering through creating an approach of the ecosystem. So I'll let you think about this for a while and having the right leadership there, connecting the dots in businesses, in the nonprofit sector and in government is essential actually to help us move into the future. Meanwhile, I'm going to open the floor to the audience for questions or quick comments. Dr. Nabil, please introduce yourself. Nabil Koshak, the Dean of Prince Mohammed bin Salman, New College in partnership with Babson. I like the comment about old and I think the right word from my perspective is outdated and resistance to update. And that's resistant to update and co-op with transformations happening in industry and digital transformation, whatever, especially educational systems are in the resistance mode. So it's classified all the unable to update. That's the case that's happening. And I think the leading universities, despite the ranking system that I don't agree with worldwide and universities that taking universities into more factory of papers, I would say, certificates or publications that is highly cited but now impact, and we talked in the morning among the panel that the need for developing actually through the World Economic Forum a framework to measure the performance and sorry, to measure the impact, the economic impact and the social growth of a university. That framework or index is not there in the market and I think that will help universities to get updated to the changes and the transformations happening everywhere else except education. I know this is not a question, it's a comment, it's a great comment actually but if there is any reaction to Dr. Nabil's comment from the panel. Good, so we'll... I think universities traditionally see themselves as the creators and disseminators of knowledge, right? So they see themselves as playing a role in research and role in teaching and they need to take on that third mission of social and economic development and I completely agree with what the gentleman is saying. Other questions, comments? Please, please introduce yourself. Cyril Faben and company, how would you describe a great leader in rocket ventures or in the digital age? I can give you an example, we have great leaders in our company so we have one of very successful leaders, Namshi. I hired a guy who was like 22 when he started. Like, basically he didn't understand anything about the world, less even about the Middle East. He studied in Berkeley I think, he is of Arab descendants so he came to Dubai and worked there and he turned out to be a great entrepreneur and why he was great is I tell you very simply because he didn't believe in anything he was told about the market before like trying it himself. So good leaders are somehow people don't take conventional wisdom as given especially in a new market and they go and take the risk to try something out new and he did it and he did it by himself. So what we look always for is people who are hands-on, who are not like I tell you honestly we hire a lot with MBAs from top universities like we have like an Howard MBA and so on. But we just do this because it's some kind of filtering that happened, right? So because they did a lot of interviews and we don't have to do all these interviews again. We don't hire them because they learned whatever they learned in Howard or wherever. And I think that's also a question on the education part. I mean for me as an entrepreneur I interviewed thousands of people, I hired hundreds of them. The important part was really never like what they learned there, right? It's for me like some kind of filtering that I get for free albeit McKinsey or BCG or whatever and then it depends on the people how hands-on they are and a lot in this region in Europe and so on. They take it as like okay I have this brand and now the world has to serve me. I tell you in our leadership team people who don't spend like most of their time on the street and when I say on the street I mean it literally, they're not good entrepreneurs. We build a company in Tehran. Tehran is as you know not probably, I mean it's not New York or Berlin and the founders there like they came from investment banking and so on and when they landed they had to sit there building a taxi company for example two weeks on the street driving taxi all day to learn what the taxi drivers want and what they don't want. Again when we started there everybody was telling us ah nobody needs this service because everybody you can hail a cab very easily. Now we are doing hundreds of thousands of rides a day dominating, changing the entire logistics infrastructure of the country and these guys really learned it from scratch and they didn't believe in this conventional wisdom and did it themselves. It's interesting I just thought about this today that Bill Gates, the three companies that we think of today as the new economy whether it's Microsoft, Apple or Facebook, their founders are dropouts. Yet they are most rigorous from a human resource perspective and hiring the MBAs of the graduates of the top universities. So it's interesting as a founder and as an organization how you look for different levels of leadership and talent and that it is not what you think at first. Yeah, should we all drop out and go for it for Microsoft? I don't think that's going to happen. Well said. Please, gentlemen fourth row, fifth row. Yes, I'm Malcolm from QNED. I have a question about, now let's say the old people still willing one to embrace change but we know that it's difficult to change DNA in the company's decision making they still want to do it. Now is there a chance for the disruptor and the traditional being disrupted people to work together if the willingness on the top is there? It's just like you have the dropouts who actually hire actually the people graduate so they find a way to collaborate so can you think that's possible the disruptor working, the whole panel? Should I answer that? I mean I can speak for the rest of no problem. No, I think they, look I am not 40 yet. I'm going to be 40 in two months but by any definition I'm not on social media I just got literally, sorry to understand how Twitter works and so am I old or young or I don't know and I think and going back to my earlier discussion on investing in the future if we were to move what we do now digitally completely there's a lot of risk in going there. Now it's obvious that you should do it but three years, four years ago it wasn't obvious so are you as a leader able to listen to views that are different and to accept a data-driven solution as part of what you do? And then are you Meritrat? Meritrat, tick? I'm learning English as we speak so I think this is all you could do, right? Are you open to ideas and opposite views and do you judge people based on their performance and that's it, it's really simple and if you do that I think you'll be successful. So I want actually to ask Paul a question and it is my intention to ask it to a non-Arab because it's about politics a bit. So how do you account for political risk in all the equations? So the quality is for leading a business in Germany with all the disruption that is happening in the world technology and so on and so forth. Is it different from the qualities needed for someone that is based here? I mean I just mentioned they operate a company in Tehran and you operate here under 21 probably or more jurisdiction if you want to address the Arab market if you want to address Turkey and Iran then you add too and probably a lot of businesses operate out of a convenience base that is Dubai or elsewhere and few markets in the Arab world are easy to do business and at the same time they're good markets. Yeah so I think it's really important to understand your customer and the market you're operating in and that means the politics, the regulation, the culture, it's not just politics and so yes of course if you don't understand that and I guess that's what you're saying when an entrepreneur or a leader needs to get out onto the street that's the reason they need to understand how it really is rather than how they might think it is from some academic analysis. So yes it's different on the ground in Tehran to in Berlin and you better take account of that when you're designing whatever it is, your taxi company. You know behind that is the same what you were just saying openness to listen and to learn rather than to apply some predetermined recipe and behind that is the same drive and determination and desire to make things happen. So the sort of fundamental qualities I think are going to be the same wherever but of course if you're not very localised in the way you apply that you're going to come unstuck, yeah. Thank you. Hummood. Hummood, editor-in-chief of Harvard Business Review Arabia. Actually my question to the panelists about the controversial debate going on when we compare between the base of entrepreneurial thinking, endeavours, ventures comparing to governments readiness with regulations to embrace those disruptive ideas and ventures. All of the things we are noticing that entrepreneurial thinking are ahead of government to embrace, to build the infrastructure and the ecosystem for it. So how do you deal in your NGOs, organisations with this challenge? In some cases we see entrepreneurs as like rebels or considered as illegal people until they improve themselves later on with the regulations. So can I just like answer in this way? I think like actually it's a good situation here. If you look even into Germany for example you have tons of regulations, there's no Uber now and it's regulated out and when you start something because there is already so much rules so much infrastructure, you're competing against a lot, right? And they stop you, it's harder, go to France and start to open a side up there. I think it's easier to start in Saudi Arabia. It's true, they're like foreign investment things etc. But in general because there is less end, if you want to say it negatively because they are slow they will not react quick enough to you. So you have I think even a bigger opportunity as a founder, as an entrepreneur to build something really big here because here you also are competing against less. If I go to Germany they have a good infrastructure they have a good like transportation system, metro system and so on. You go here, there's not much, right? So basically as an entrepreneur you have it easier. I have to tell you from my personal experience even regulation is better. I think also because there is some kind of feeling we didn't do it, so we allow the others to do it and as long as it's not like getting too political, and I think also because they didn't realize how important it is. You go into oil and similar businesses they will tell you, wait, because they know it's big. You went into e-commerce, they said, these are the internet guys, let's play. And then you own a huge chunk, you own Kareem, you own transportation, then you might get trouble and problems later on. But the interesting part about it right now is probably many don't realize how important it is. So there is a big chance that you can build something without getting stopped by regulation. And I think that's a very good opportunity. Can you comment on that because you're building actually an ecosystem in Sharjah and a lot of that has to deal with how government used this regulation framework. Actually I was also in a session yesterday where Joy from Fretcher spoke and then Abdullah from Kareem spoke. So it's really interesting to hear. In fact, Joy actually said that this red tape was her number one challenge. It wasn't even access to finance, it was the red tape. So I agree that it is still very difficult. I mean, it's very hard to paint the entire region with one brush but I can speak for the UAE and the UAE's government is trying very hard to build an enabling environment for entrepreneurs. Our role as a government-sponsored non-profit if you like is to also play an advocacy role and that's where I think that we can sit in between the entrepreneurs and listen to them because a lot of people know what the challenges are but no one's actually trying to do anything about it. So we have that special role where we have access to the entrepreneurs. We hear on the ground what those challenges are but we also have access to the decision makers, to the policy makers and we can actually share these our recommendations with them. So that's I think the role of an entity like Shira and that's something that we are trying to do. We've actually built a group, we're calling it Shabaka informally at the moment where we have the different centres of entrepreneurship in different universities. So you have AUC, you have AUB, AUK and YUAD so on part of this network and trying to play this advocacy role on a regional level, sort of everyone doing it in their own country. So we are trying to build that at a regional level but I can speak for Sharjah and the UAE. I think the government is trying very hard but I'll also echo what someone said on the panel yesterday which is, you know, don't wait for permission. Ask for forgiveness later. That's the approach that most entrepreneurs take. They're not going to wait, you know, and so I think I've seen that happen in our own cohort. Go out there and do it. Regulation will follow. So Fadi wanted to say something. No, I think what we're talking about here is regulatory entrepreneurship and that somebody like Uber or Airbnb is so disruptive, they go to a place, they produce such great benefits. Some cost and the government says, well, you know, how do we balance consumers against the traditional sectors that we run? It happened with us. So when we build cake, we had no regulatory framework for five years. We actually had a port that's operational without a license. So all the customs people are there, et cetera, and we didn't have a license. So this is a regulatory entrepreneurship where we create something that's so good for the economy and society that government has to follow you. But the insight here is very simple. Governments are generally incompetent. Yeah, and they need to be kept on their toes. And the reason for that is simple. It's not because you're smarter. It is because as a business, you get constant feedback every day. You try, you fail, do it again until you get it better. If you don't, you die as a business. As government, you try. You don't care what happens. And if you fail, you just ask for more resources and you get bigger. Yeah, that's if it's a government that is not accountable. No, no, in general, all departments around the world, I can take it everywhere around the world and apply the same thing. But my point is around business, just having a lot more information. So what does a smart regulator do? They hire the best consultant. Mackenzie is right behind the viewer. And then they ask people, what do you think about the regulations? That's as far as they can go in terms of getting feedback. So it's a completely different cycle of feedback. And therefore, they're always going to be behind. And this is going to get worse as digital disruption is happening and the business cycle is just becoming so much faster. Well, no one is going to ask Mackenzie anything as long as we have been on the panel with us. Please, the gentleman in the back. Sorry. Hi, my name is Neerskland. I work for a Norwegian oil company called Statoe. I'm 50, so I probably have no future in Rocket Internet. And I also represent an industry that also is kind of a good example of this topic. How do you lead into the future and how do you lead oil, gas and company into the future? You need to be part of the change. At the same time, you also talk about entrepreneurship. And the big ideas don't come from the existing corpus. They come from those that sits in different structures. So I just want to ask the panel, how do you lead through this with a business model as of this? Any takers? I mean, I'll take a crack. So you mentioned Einstein. I'm going to mention Darwin. I think the, you know, you wait for everybody to die or make sure they die quicker by disrupting them. I think there's a lot of strength in what you're saying. But what Darwin, one of the quotes I like from him is he said it's not the strongest or the biggest of a species that survives. It's the most adaptable to change. And at a time, again, like you talked about at the beginning, where there's just so much disruption and so much opportunity for disruption, the key thing as a leader is to be forward-looking and open to adapting in the way, and obviously you have to make good choices about in what way you adapt. But if you're, I mean, the horror stories of the companies that get it wrong, you know, the Kodaks that just go out of business because they are not able to adapt to digital film is because the leadership, even though they knew what was coming, were just somehow unable to change. They were exactly what you were describing. But if you're able to, it's not really a question of age, it's a question of mindset. If you're able to, you know, with sensible judgment, figure out what is changing about your world and therefore what needs to change about your business model, then that's how you adapt. And there are plenty of examples of incumbents that adapt it as well as disruptors that displaced them. Yeah, that was a great reference to Darwin. Really. So Hashem, do you want to say something or Nuh? Because I promised to give you the floor. I mean, just if you're interested, I don't want to put you on the spot. Use the microphone, please. Son of the outdated. One question is those outdated, the people under them, they're also a little bit outdated and also the people under them. So as soon as the first one goes, the next one comes in and the next one comes in. The fourth or fifth one comes in. Your business is dead. There isn't enough time to actually enter the market. The other question is, or a comment is stuff like Shira that's in the educational part of it, since I was part of Shira and I experienced this, is that they clear up the picture of what you see and you need to just make sure that you're on the right path. And I mean, I'm an economist. So some of the things that I get taught are mostly theory. 20% of the forecast or regression that we do doesn't work. So whatever we're being taught is not actually applicable. And with the rate of change and especially technology, the universities are not speeding up. So how can you deal with that? There isn't enough time that you graduate. If you're going to go to a corporate to work there, it's just a signaling tool that you want to have a good uni. But if you get a startup, then your knowledge isn't enough. So I believe that we need more things like Shira that help us to just fill in that middle gap. And then there's another gap, and I think most of you covered which is the gap in the market that the private sector needs to help to develop the economy in a sense that the government isn't fast enough to adapt that development. Thank you. That's from my side. You have a good combination of being an economist and an entrepreneur at the same time. So that will work well for you. Please gentlemen in the back. Hi, good afternoon, everyone. I'm Mohammed Tamalia from the Jeddah Hub. I had kind of two questions I wanted to address. Professor Schwab met with the 100 entrepreneurs here, and he told us when he met with the global shapers yesterday that the average age was 40. When he meant the entrepreneurs in China, the average age was 20. So businesses are being led by 40-year-olds, not 20-year-olds. So for the future of business to be led, we need the youth to be involved in enabling these businesses. But for my end, I believe maybe part of the issue is the culture of failure that youth do not want to fail, and maybe education, the education system does not encourage entrepreneurs. So that's one aspect of the question. Maybe you guys have a comment on it. Why is the average age 40, not 20 like China? The other aspect is in the Jeddah Hub we organized youth conference last week. We had youth from 57 countries come and attend and come to Jeddah. And the main aspect they raised regarding entrepreneurship was the lack of financing, and be it from the banks that did want to finance SMEs, or be it from entrepreneurs that don't have trust in the youth, and when they want to invest in the youth, they want a high equity stake to control the business. So how can that be resolved as well from that end? Thank you. So Fahd, can I ask you, although you're not 40 yet in two months, can I ask you to answer the question on why you have to be 40 on average? I actually have the data to back it up. So it always bothers me when we have a conversation and there's no data, because you can, you know, it's a meagrelious conversation. They're sitting there telling me your opinion, I'm telling you mine, but then, okay, we end up nowhere. So we actually talk about the ecosystem of entrepreneurship in Saudi. So I don't have the data on Jordan, but I'll give you a very, very interesting evidence on this. So we benchmarked our ecosystem among 66 countries in the world to see where we ranked. So when we ask Saudis, what do you think of entrepreneurship? Are you afraid of being an entrepreneur? Do you think Saudi Arabia is a good place to be an entrepreneur? It turns out that Saudi Arabia's youth is the most ambitious among the 66 countries, with 81% answering yes. It is a great place. We want to be there, and we think Saudi Arabia will serve us well. When you look at success rates going, success meaning you started your business and it lasted for more than four years, it goes to 2%. You compare that to the U.S., it's 12% survival rate. To Lebanon, it's 20%. So you ask, why? And then you look at the ecosystem and you benchmark and you realize the following, that on education for entrepreneurship, we ranked 61 out of 66. On financing entrepreneurs, although we are a G20 economy, we are 44 out of 66. And when it comes to the regulatory environment and the ease of doing business, 59 out of 66. So yes, the youth want to do it, but they have to fail three or four times before they get there, so they have to turn 40 for their success. Do you want to comment on the 20-40 divide? Let me ask you first, is 42 old already? Absolutely not. So I don't believe people get more stupid when they get older, to make this clear. But what we see is, I can tell you from my experience, we hire a lot of very young people, like 20-ish, and I think there are two main reasons why these guys are more successful than others, than older people, and I'm 33. I think number one is, they have less responsibilities. If you have less responsibilities, you can take higher risk. And to do something in entrepreneurship means to start something, not to go into an existing successful company, though the risk is simply higher. And you need to take risk to be an entrepreneur. Karim founders were at McKinsey doing good money, so they went out, they were working in a shitty room, and so it's a risk. You don't do it if you have five kids. Maybe you do it, but I think that's number one. And number two is how much power you have to do something. As a younger you are, you can do lots of nights, like either party or work. And as older you get, it's like harder. And if you look at a lot of companies, a lot of scientists, you always imagine scientists are gray hair, long beard, etc., but that's not true, right? Like Einstein again was 24, 25 when he formulated his Nobel Prize theory. All big mathematicians, most of them did their major work under 30. So if you look into science, you have this. If you look into sports, you have this. And if you look into entrepreneurship, you also have this. So there is some drivers, there are exceptions, there are great exceptions to this rule for sure. But yeah, it's like you have to take this time. So don't go on mentoring lessons. Don't go and let everybody tell you you have to learn if you're under 30. It is a time to build great things. It is a time where you have the highest probability to build a huge company and not to learn. It's not the time to learn, it's the time to learn when you're like 16, 17. So use this time. Don't wait like for the older guys to tell you what to do. It is simply the time to prove to everyone else that you can do something huge. Even, yeah, I think the only exception is maybe politics because then you need to network a lot, be a lot in these meetings. People know you, so you need to be old and stuff to be successful. But I think for business, et cetera, I think you have to do it when you have the most power. Well, Macron is a disruptor in France, so that worked for him although he's doing it. So we still have five more minutes and I'm going to, I don't think we're going to have more time for questions. If you have comments, very quick ones because I want really to just end with one question for everybody to answer. So Karim, if you have a comment, yeah, very quickly please. Karim Sagir, Aajman University in the UAE. I have worked in different countries in the region including Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt and now in the UAE and they have been dealing with students a lot but more importantly with parents. And, you know, many people talk about Silicon Valley, it's very inspiring, et cetera, but the way people are educated at very early stage, even before going to school here, really people, I mean kids are scared about failure and I think there are very few NGOs who are working at that stage, you know, primary schools so that to show people what innovation means that it's fine to fail once and then I think we need much more of this in the region even before the schooling or at the primary education. The second command is many parents force the students to choose the classical jobs like medical studies or law or engineering because of the lack of scholarships and because the students are very dependent financially of the parents. It's basically the parents finance the studies which is not the case in the US or in the Silicon Valley. So these are just commands that the parents maybe should be educated more and before the students or before even going to the primary education. If I could just comment on that, I think it's a very relevant point because and this is what we did when we have our demo day. So at the end of the accelerator program, I know you attended it. One of the things we made sure is that all the teams, so His Highness attended the demo day, Sheikh Abdu'a attended the demo day. We asked every entrepreneur to bring their parents and ensure that they were there when they presented in front of His Highness because we really want to show that this is a viable career path. So I agree it starts from home and this is part of what Shara'a does as well is we actually start our courses when they're as young as 12 years old because I can't come at 21 and 22 and say, hey, you shouldn't be afraid of failure. It's too late then. As you said, it's a culture that starts from the home and it starts when they're very young. So one question to all the panelists. What is one word, one skill that you'd like to see more of in the context of leadership in your business or the ecosystem in which you work? Paula, start with you. Inspiration. Inspiration. Good. Najla. Collaboration. Excellent. Iyad. Sabar. Endurance. Patience. Endurance and patience. Good. And fahd. Innovation by risk-taking. Excellent. So ladies and gentlemen, please join me to give a, really, I mean, this was a stellar panel. And excellent, excellent questions from the audience too. So thank you very much and enjoy the evening. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.