Disrupting ourselves

I am proud to belong to the people of our region, yet, there are a few brands that I do not appreciate in our world, one of them is using the ‘Middle East’, and what I appreciate even less is using the brand the ‘Middle East and North Africa-MENA’ and this is the reason I have never used them in my writings or in any content I created.

These terms are geographically inaccurate, were given to us by others, do not represent us, and have become synonymous with the absence of peace; which is of the most significant human values and aspirations.

When is the best time to change and build a better reality? At the time of crisis.

Thinking universally, these particularly challenging times offer us an even more unique opportunity because our generations are witnessing not one crisis, but this decade of multiple or poly crisis - health and wellness, the rising cost of living, and climate change, and it’s at the time of crisis when systems that cannot keep up wane, and innovative systems become mainstream, or what science calls Disruptive Innovation.

In particular, I believe that our lives will be impacted by this disruptive innovation, induced by our collective current crisis management efforts, in three equally significant ways; economically, socially, and politically.

Economically

What is the current value of your labour and working hours? Day by day, the answer to this question depends on what percentage of your work can be performed in two ways: a machine, especially if you are in manufacturing, or an artificially intelligent programme such as ChatGPT, if you are in any field.

This spells disruption for our region, where around half a billion people live, high fertility rate, and mismatch in education to job market.

Socially

Thanks to the advancement in health and wellness, we are witnessing constant interactions between several generations for the first time in history; the Boomers generation born in the 40s-60s, Generation X in the 70s, Millennials born in the 80s and 90s, and Generation Alpha born in 2000-2010s. What strengths do we need today from each generation?

Today, we live in parallel worlds, the physical world in addition to the digital and Metaverse world, and unless we disrupt our reluctance to embrace the digital world and leverage its positive sides to the benefit of the universe, we will miss out on the synergy that comes from diverse generations building forward better.

Politically

Power will always live in access to natural resources, especially as we are witnessing endless competition for energy security between alliances that do not regard our region’s interests as their priority; whether it is the United States, or European Union, or the emerging BRICS alliance.

For the past 400 years, our region kept providing cheaper natural resources to the advanced industrial nations and bore the brunt of its conflicts.

Competitions will never disappear but it’s time to invest in disrupting ourselves, and creating synergy with the world not as a weak, tainted brand, but on a strong region that believes in UN Sustainable Development Goals, thus creating a brand that we and future generations will be proud of and a more just world.