To survive and thrive, consumer-facing businesses in the UAE and KSA will need to be managed much more professionally and tightly than they were in the past.
Amal Dokhan, Director, Babson Global Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (BGCEL) in Saudi Arabia, on the Kingdom's reception to (and aptitude for) change.
While the GCC is a small economy, some players in its leading sectors of healthcare, retail, transport and logistics, energy and power and real estate stand proudly on the global scene.
By drawing on lessons learned from other "clusters of innovation" such as those in smaller European countries or Singapore, we found that Kuwait has an opportunity to be strategically focused on areas of local strength.
The Empowering the GCC digital workforce: Building adaptable skills in the digital era report found that the proportion of digital jobs GCC countries are particularly low- accounting for only 1.7% of the GCC workforce.
The UAE, until now a tax-free country, announced that Value-added tax (VAT) is to be introduced in 2018, which as a whole, will intensify price pressure and deteriorate margins, making price management more important than ever.
Qatar's hospitality sector is tilted towards serving the upper end of the market– more than half of the new hotels being planned over the next five years will be five star properties.
