This past week I was in Amman. Amman, the modern and ancient capital of Jordan, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.
It is a perfect convergence of the old and new, poverty and wealth, east and west, stale and fresh. The gleaming white houses, kebab stalls with roasting meat, cafes with rich Arabian coffee and Narghile (smoke pipe), conjure a mood straight from a page of Rumi (the 13th century dervish/sufian poet).
Regardless of personal circumstances or social status, the entire week of my visit, I was constantly reminded of the inherent hospitality of the local people as exemplified by the Arabic words “Ahlan wa sahlan” (“I Welcome You”), at every turn. It is a melting pot where millions of Jordanian, Iraqi, Palestinian, Bedouin, Lebanese, Arab Christians and Muslims live together.
Although The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (“The Kingdom of Peace and Plenty”) evokes a simpler time, a keen sense of change is in the air (not just in Jordan but the entire mideast)…a vast majority of people are thristy for knowledge, prosperity and modernism. It is a an observation often lost when it comes to the Middle East. I had the chance to spend a great deal of time with a diverse group of local political figures, academics, entreprenuers, lawyers, and investors.
As the global community increasingly gets opportunistic about emerging markets and we see more and more Petro dollars buying into Western (especially the US blue-chip) organizations, one can’t help but wonder about the future of the global economc trends.
In the early 70s, my father took me to Iraq where he worked as a civil engineer for water resource management for a couple of years. That was my first introduction to the Middle East. We left primarily because my parents were concerned about our education.
Despite the powerful Petro dollars, fancy car dealers, shushi bars, and night clubs, a primary concern in this region remains -– a lack of pragmatic applied education and entrepreneurship that’ drives today’s ‘knowledge ecomony’ and provides the ultimate opportunity to lift the socio-economic conditions of the middle class in these markets – the pillar of economic and social stability.
According to The Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation – an initiative with a fund size of $10 billion spearheaded by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai:
“Since the publication of the Development Report “Towards Establishing a Society of Knowledge” in 2003, the situation of knowledge in the Arab world has not budged a bit. Perhaps it has become worse. In countries like Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon, intellectuals and pioneers of culture and knowledge, especially university professors, are subject to threat and assassination. Data show that Arab countries spend the least on scientific research (0.2%) and that Arab scientific production is hardly 1% of world research activity, and that what the Arabs translated from the Age of Awakening to the present does not equal what Spain or Italy produces in one year. For instance, in one year, the Arab countries produced 6000 books while North America alone produced 102,000 books.”
What is even more daunting and sad is the fact that many educated scientists, engineers, and researchers are woefully underemployed because their skills are not commercialized (for example, my taxi driver who was an engineer). It is well established by now that countries and societies who fail to create and innovate commercialized knowledge products and services will fail as a community. One could say the same about the U.S. as it loses its foothold in today’s knowledge economy.
The developing world must create innovation laboratories to penetrate the knowledge ecomony. Commercial innovation, however, is not haphazard. Although its core is a creative idea, it only becomes effective when part of a process: a community or a leader recognizes a need, assembles an organization and designs processes to meet it, and then applies business and technology to make it work. Effective usage and management of technology can not only create more profits but can also forever alter these the underdeveloped markets – a topic we wrote about extensively in our last book Sustained Innovation (2007). We wrote:
“When we try to articulate what is happening in this new era, we resort to a familiar set of words: globalization, outsourcing, offshoring, information age, innovation, age of connectivity, disaggregated corporation, death of command and control, real time corporation, knowledge economy, sustainability.
As with a dozen blind men touching an elephant and describing what they feel, each of these terms is relevant as far as it goes, but each addresses only part of the whole. To choose one as a lens through which to view life and business in the 21st Century is to run the risk of missing the larger picture.
As a first step in organizing our thinking about these forces, and designing a response, we can group these terms in two categories. Information, knowledge and innovation might be considered the “what.” Connectivity, disaggregation and partnerships might be considered the “how.”
Information > Knowledge > Innovation
Connectivity > Disaggregation > Partnerships
In other words, what these communities need today to survive is information, which can be analyzed and turned into knowledge, which can then point them to innovation. We get there by connecting, disaggregating and reaching out in new ways.”
Whether the global community chooses to participate or not, it is critical for us as a society to recognize that what goes on in these developing parts of the world can have an enormous overall impact on the world.
A lot to be learned, understood, and processed!
Regardless, I returned home with a feeling of optimism and vast potential!
