Areté Club Blog

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1. Rosie
   Posted October 11, 2009 at 11:49 pm | Permalink

   Last Tuesday was a fantastic night, so before I begin to put my thoughts to paper I want to thank and congratulate Sara for once again bringing together the elements that make Areté Club events/dinners such a success. The two formidable and inspiring speakers, Salvatore Nigro and Doug Richard, were as interesting, open and challenging as any you could have hoped or asked for.

   If I may, I will tell you a little about myself to give you a bit of context for my impressions on the evening. My interest in this topic has developed from my work. I have for the last year or so been involved in what began as a mentoring programme for young British Muslims in deprived urban areas. The idea was to bring these youths in contact with inspiring and successful British Muslims, who have often come from same or very similar communities themselves. We aim to raise their aspirations – show them that they can do it too, that the options are there – and provide the right opportunities. We have been very fortunate to have received an overwhelming amount of support from some of the most interesting individuals I have had the pleasure of meeting. Our focus is currently in the UK but there is a ripple effect as those that we deal with invariably almost always have friends and relatives living in the Middle East. When so much of my day job is about encouraging the entrepreneur (or a more enterprising nature) in young people, the importance of this topic is for me growing daily.

   When I think of enterprise in the Middle East my mind immediately turns to Dubai with its buildings springing up at a mind-boggling rate. The never-ending construction that leaves the roads a constantly changing jigsaw puzzle to navigate your way around, its palm island, indoor ski slopes, the list goes on. I do not think that I am alone in this but it reveals a great difficulty. Put this alongside some of the many expanses of desert in Egypt where none but the hardiest of Bedouin tribes exist and the problem of comparison reveals itself. There is such wonderful diversity throughout the Middle East that it is arguably hard to contain it as one entity, this ‘Middle East’. In much the same way, at work I often and repeatedly reject the term ‘Muslim community’ – closer to the truth is to talk about the many Muslim communities around the world and even within the UK alone. While the religion is a common identity, it is one that is as unifying as it is divisive both within and beyond its own boundaries. But I digress. The entrepreneurial climate and challenges being faced from region to region in the Middle East will therefore be varied and nuanced, but some general themes can be (and were) drawn out.

   I am not going to merely summarise what was said, I realise this is not allowed under Areté Club Rules and also not necessarily thought-provoking. What I would like to do instead is use some of the points discussed as a starting point to pose more questions. I do not presume to know enough to put forward solutions to such important issues, and I strongly believe that the best discussions do create more questions than they offer answers. There is no doubt it was a good discussion, so here I go!

   The title for this dinner intrigued me but has since troubled me. I am aware that I may approach it much like a university student might an essay but it is only a few years since I was a student and I have not had to apply my mind to something like this since then.

   “Entrepreneurial culture in the Middle East: 1) is it compatible and 2) what is the future for youth employment?”

   1) So is entrepreneurial culture compatible with the Middle East? Undeniably so, otherwise there would not be the history of enterprise and level of commerce we are able to see today.

   2) What is the future for youth employment? Without a crystal ball nobody can answer that for sure.

   So the question should be answered with a “yes” and “who knows”? Hardly. What can be considered and suggested are those elements that will influence enterprise in this part of the world.

   The question that therefore ties these two together is “what are the factors challenging the establishment and development of enterprise and the entrepreneur in the Middle East?” This reveals current incompatibilities as well as shaping the way we look at how things are to develop in coming years, hopefully in a practical solution-seeking way. From what could have been a very negative topic came many positive ideas – more is the pity that the night’s esteemed company should not be in these Middle Eastern regions to deliver these solutions.

   A significant problem today in many parts of the Middle East appears to be the level and type of training and it’s misalignment with the job opportunities and training required by industry. The education/training : opportunities ratio, if I may put it that way. If we are to accept that a country’s industry and economy start with the infra-structure creating, physical labour-demanding and ‘industrial phase’, progressing on to secondary and then tertiary industries, the mismatch here, I would suggest, has come from Middle Eastern countries glancing to the West without taking into account historical progress and desiring to fast-forward these key early stages of this process. Expectation has leapt ahead of reality. What I find heartbreaking about this situation is that the energy, intelligence and drive of those I have met from the Middle East (the number of which went from minimal to a few hundred in the last 6 months) puts to shame our Western counterparts. So much energy and ability with little opportunity for real application…

   So should expectations be lowered, or opportunities be manufactured? I am in no way saying that those in the Middle East should discontinue their education, but there does need to be a solution to this mismatch. Disharmony is often seen within societies when this gap is filled by the quickest compromise – immigrants willing to do these lower-skilled, less educated jobs at a fraction of the price. Dubai has a huge Indian population now; Emiraties are now outnumbered by foreigners in such huge numbers that they only make up approximately 40% of the total population. One might say that this is a sign of Dubai’s success, as it has become so appealing that millions have flocked there, but that is scraping the barrel for a silver lining. In reality it is a sad truth, as those remaining often have little chance of success themselves and as a result almost no role in carving the path of Dubai’s future.

   Defining what it means to be an entrepreneur would not only be difficult but unwise – it is a term that encompasses so much and allows for many forms to come and is a great strength. To provide a nugget of clarity, however, I will refer briefly to Wikipedia’s definition: “an entrepreneur is a person who has possession of an enterprise, or venture, and assumes significant accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome”. That seems close enough for me, although I would like to broaden the net to consider the ‘entrepreneurial nature’ instead, as something that drives people to start something, to push it forward, to make things happen. The possibilities are endless; long live the entrepreneur.

   If enterprise can take almost any form, are there types of enterprise that can be identified?

   Social entrepreneurship is something I only became aware of in recent years, and has since become very close to my heart as it combines both the business world with the social conscience – a win:win situation by all accounts surely. To call on that tome of knowledge Wikipedia again, “social enterprises are social mission driven organisations which trade in goods or services for a social purpose”. I would tentatively suggest that social entrepreneurship as a principle is in fact better suited to the Middle East than it is even in the West. The reason I say this is because of the roots of Islam that reach into almost every aspect of life in most of the countries in the Middle East. My knowledge of the Qu’ran is limited, and the Prophet’s teachings too. What I have learnt this past year and a half is about the responsibility placed upon the individual by his or her Islamic faith, as steward on earth, and the duty towards one’s community (in particular traditionally vulnerable groups – women, the young, and the old).

   If social enterprise sits so comfortably alongside the values of Islam, and many of those characteristics of earlier capitalist enterprise contribute to the tensions with the ‘immoral’ West, perhaps this is the route that should be taken.