Tech Nomads of the Universe

The Gulf, Turkey and the broader Middle East

The Middle East: that famous, and famously indefinable, region. What is it and where, precisely is it? The discussion of its borders—where it stops and where it started—could really go on forever. And it has.

There is the purely geographic angle and then there is the cultural and societal angle, and what answer you get often depends on how and whom you ask. But in the general sense, the Middle East comprises a jumble of widely varying countries centered around the Persian Gulf, and extending from west and central Asia to North Africa. But in some ways, anyone who spends any time there may have their own personal definition. Personally, I've devoted quite a bit of my working life there, and I would include regions of the Gulf such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman, the Levant such as Lebanon and Jordan, stretching up north into Turkey and west to Egypt. I have been visiting the countries of the Middle East since the mid 1990s, mostly as a stopover on trips to the Far East, but it progressively became more a place where I worked, had friends, and a hub for a lot of my travels in the Middle East and East Africa.

Tech innovation in the Middle East region is something of a difficult dilemma. The opportunities looked different in different regions, which made sense given the variety of political contexts and histories in the region. But all in all, accompanying the seeming confusion is a feeling that the region is one poised on the verge of an awakening. Like Africa, the Middle East is a fertile ground, a pot just about to boil, and on the ground and in the air, you can feel that something is soon to happen. There are positive signs for the spark of change all around, but it is as yet far from clear when it will happen, where it will happen, or who will drive it.

I have been to the region for work or play more than a hundred times over the years, and sometimes for extended durations, so I have lots of friends there. There were three in particular, who I've known for a long while and who I knew would have interesting perspectives: Majid Alghaslane in Saudi Arabia, Mussaad Al Razouki in Kuwait and Mustafa Ergen in Turkey.

Majid — Women and young people are the key to success in a growing country

I met Majid in 2004 while he was on assignment in Caspian Networks, a startup I was at in the Valley. He had joined from Aramco, the largest oil company in the world to immerse into the Silicon Valley startup world. He recalled his time on that project, where we worked closely together, by saying it had been a great startup experience, with disruptive and highly complex technology. The timing was not optimal though, with its technology probably a decade ahead of the curve and launching just post Internet-bubble-bust.

Majid is about as pro-tech and pro-innovation as I can imagine anyone being. He had been a lead technologist at Aramco, and the head information technology officer at various prestigious Saudi academic and industrial institutions, before launching his own advisory venture. We had met often in Dubai and Riyadh over the years, over passionate debates on how to drive the region forward.

"I have always been a champion of a knowledge-based economy in Saudi Arabia," he says, which as he points out is a country founded on a natural-resources-based-economy. Majid helped to establish the first major supercomputing center at a university, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, which is the first mixed-gender university campus in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia, and the entire region in general, was in desperate need of bringing on tech innovation: "It is the fastest way to create jobs in an emerging economy where I currently reside in Saudi Arabia," Majid says.

He added that he doesn't see innovation growth as some far-fetched, impossible-to-achieve notion. He thinks Saudi Arabia can get there, and get there quickly.

"Nothing is impossible as long as you have smart people involved and a political will to get things done," he says, adding that in his experience, the one major element that has to be in place in order to find success is great people: "That's it. Not process, not systems or programs. If you have the right passionate people involved, they will auto-tune to the same mission and vision."