COMMENT
esque Here Comes The Airplane, which
promises to free you from the chore of
putting food in your own mouth.
These examples are all in the consumer
space… but that’s also part of
the problem. A quick look through
Techcrunch’s startup section (granted,
not a very scientific survey) for the past
couple of weeks reveals less than 10%
of the stories are about B2B startups.
Sometimes, articles are even about B2B
firms pivoting to become consumerfocused, as with Farmigo.
As for the B2B firms which are out there,
my perception is it’s the same set of
subjects: cloud, big data, productivity
apps, digital advertising, employee
feedback. All of these have shown up
more than once, and there’s precious
few areas being talked about outside of
these – again, as far as I can see, in my
unscientific survey.
Why should this worry Middle East
enterprises? All this stuff is a long way
away, and much of it is not very relevant
to the day-to-day problems companies in
the region face.
To which I say: exactly
The West, particularly the US, and
within the US particularly Silicon
Valley, has traditionally set the pace
for tech development. And while this is
changing, with funds and incubators
and accelerators cropping up all over the
world, a lot of the money is still in – and
from – the Valley.
So if the Valley is giving us drivel like
Peeple or Trashday, or what amounts to
another email app, or big data analysis
tool, we should be worried. More and
more these startups reflect the interests
of rich, well-educated, comfortable men
(and it is mostly men) living in California.
Unfortunately, their experience does not
reflect that of people and firms working in
the Middle East. (Except perhaps for the
current levels of rainfall.)
Diversity is one of those issues which
people can get sniffy about – but firms
are realising it’s a critical issue. In the UK,
three of the Big Four professional services
firms have changed their recruitment
processes to try and change the mix of
their employees, in order to offer a better
service to their customers.
ELIOT BEER
Tech is no different – and right now, a
lot of the sharp-end innovation in the
industry (as opposed to the big, solid
vendors) is moving away from more
“marginal” regions like the Middle East,
and looking inward, thanks to a lack of
diverse voices. In the long-run this will
cause problems for the industry – but
before then, it will be the Middle East and
other neglected regions which will suffer.
The worst part is, we won’t even know
how the Middle East is suffering – we
can’t explicitly miss what we never
had. But so many of the products and
services and technologies companies rely
on have come out of startups – so lose
the relevant startups, lose the relevant
products later on.
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INTELLIGENTCIO
This isn’t to say there’s no tech
innovation focused on the Middle
East. The UN Food and Agriculture
Orga nisation (FAO) recently announced
a project to develop a tool to track and
analyse water consumption across the
region, aimed at helping governments
and individual companies and farmers
cut water wastage and improve
agricultural yields.
A similar project is IFPRI’s Arab Spatial
tool, which aims to compile and map as
many indicators around food, agriculture
and nutrition as possible across the Arab
World, with the aim of reducing hunger
and malnutrition in the region.
Both of these big-data projects are
using technology to tackle some of the
most pressing societal challenges the
Middle East faces – and which directly
or indirectly affect every person and
company in the region. But it’s also
notable that both of them originated
outside of the region – the FAO water
project is sponsored by the Dutch
government, and Arab Spatial is largely
paid for by CGIAR, based in the US.
And, frankly, while both of these
projects are very worthy, neither are
directly commercial – likely no company
is going to get rich off the back of
leveraging variable nutrition rates across
the Levant. What’s lacking is that drive
from a local entrepreneur – someone
chewing over a problem for weeks or
months or years, before having that
“eureka” moment, and setting off to
build something to fix it.
There has been endless discussion around
the whys and wherefores of the chronic
lack of innovation and startups in the
Middle East – everything from systemic
cultural issues to education failures to
government red tape has come under the
microscope – and ultimately the reasons
for this dearth of innovation lie across all
of these and more.
Perhaps one problem which gets voiced
less often is the lack of urgency – as
noted above, it’s hard to miss what
you never had, so it’s perfectly possible
for the region to continue functioning
without a burgeoning startup scene.
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