The Economist ponders the robustness of Dubai the UAE’s political system and the future of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum.

The article encapsulates much of the chatter and questioning currently making the rounds in Dubai (whilst mistakenly generalizing across the UAE). Alongside the existential-soul-searching, there is plenty of concern about the economic and political fall out from the slowdown.

Many of the prime issues facing Dubai and the UAE are discussed:

Conflicts of interest.
The Economist rightly points out the pervasive and systemic failures of corporate governance while also touching on the nebulous boundaries between the state, business and the rulers.

In the words of a longtime adviser to the government, “you have a confusion between government and commercial operations. There is nobody in Dubai in government who isn’t first and foremost a businessman.” There are “massive conflicts of interest” across the board. “There are no checks and balances…the incentives for saying nothing are great.”

It wasn’t that long ago that the leading regulator of business in Dubai was also chairman of the city’s biggest public firm. The over-stretched and over-chummy boards of Dubai’s leading firms all featured the same handful of local businessmen and technocrats (a mistake Abu Dhabi seems to be repeating). It used to be argued that this was due to a lack of qualified locals but this has long since ceased to be the case (and besides what’s the use of a qualified but over-stretched board?).
The negative effects of this set-up are serious and materially under-reported.

Transparency.
The Economist:

Abu Dhabi is ahead of Dubai in terms of government openness and efficiency. But in both the emirates all the big decisions are still taken behind closed doors.

It is notable that almost nobody in business or government is prepared to talk publicly.

I am always going on about the need for Dubai to take a more transparent approach, unfortunately secrecy still seems to be in its DNA- a relic from another far less prominent and far more isolated era. Dubai now more than ever depends on foreign capital, debt and talent all of which reward openness and transparency.
One of the glaring and most hurtful opacity examples given concerns the confusion surrounding Dubai’s debt figures:

Earlier this year a leading Dubai figure said that the statelet’s consolidated debt was around $80 billion, but no one has issued a detailed breakdown of accounts; only a minority of Dubai companies are listed. Others say that the true sum of debt may be closer to $120 billion.

I think the difference of the figures may pertain to total foreign debt vs. total debt but it’s impossible to tell as the authorities have been deafeningly quiet since Mohammed Al Abbar’s comments referred to above (He claimed Dubai had US$100 billion in assets without elaborating on what exactly those assets were). I really think Dubai is shooting itself in the foot with this deny and obfuscate strategy. All this segues nicely into the next issue.

Souk Al Bahar by Momentary Awe

It is not clear who is in charge—apart from Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum
He appointed a respected local man, Nasser al-Shaikh, to take over the department of finance and sort out the crisis.
But in May he was summarily and mysteriously sacked.

This has been one of the most puzzling and unexpected developments for me. I can understand how the government was initially caught off guard by the severity of the global event and its amplified consequences for the city, but there has been a conspicuous lack of leadership since. Where is the customary Dubai ‘take the bulls by the horn’ approach?
No doubt there is intense in-fighting and finger-pointing amongst Dubai’s leading triumvirate and its prominent families but nine months later there’s still nobody stepping up to coordinate the city-state’s plans and interface with the press, expatriates and investors.

What’s next?
The Economist:

Indeed, the Dubai disaster may prompt Dubai’s Maktoum family and Abu Dhabi’s ruling Nahyans to strengthen the federation and work towards a system of greater accountability and openness.

This has perhaps already started to happen post-bailout with the cabinet reshuffle that saw two Abu Dhabi royals appointed as Deputy Prime Ministers (a post that did not previously exist I believe). A friend tells me a partner at one of the consulting firms says the crisis ‘Put the united back into the United Arab Emirates‘. Further political reform and federal centralization is likely.

It is inevitable that Abu Dhabi will have more say over the financial management of the other emirates as its role as ultimate underwriter of liabilities always implicitly assumed seems to have been made explicit with the Dubai bailout.

The Economist signs off with:

If the economy gets stuck, the glory days, at least of the Maktoums, may be numbered.

This sounds like baseless, mild shit-stirring. The Maktoums’ position is as entrenched as it ever was and Sheikh Muhammad as far as I can see remains a very popular leader amongst locals and expatriates. But obviously if we get a Roubini-esque full scale and prolonged depression in Dubai that hurts the ruler’s local consitituencies, all bets are off.

Benevolent Dictatorship v Democracy.
My admittedly far from objective opinion is that the leaderships in both Dubai and Abu Dhabi have been qualified successes. When taken within the uninspiring Middle Eastern context, the verdict is positively promoted to ‘beacon of hope’ levels. My own baseless take is that the UAE’s leaders are genuinely well-intentioned and will cautiously open up to more institutional-based, democratic in nature reforms in the country’s politics.

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Brand Dubai

Tallest, highest, biggest, shiniest, a Vegas like moneymaking machine… words often associated with brand Dubai. But dig a little deeper and what you hear from the locals is actually very different. This is a city about values and traditions, a home for families, businesses and culture. You only have to see how bustling the traditional Souks are and the perfectly preserved old town, to see what traditional customs mean to locals and tourists alike. The region is clearly about more than financial gains and a destination for the rich in which to play. But seemingly this deeper Dubai is invisible to the world.

Brand Dubai grew during an unsustainable boom, rather like the dotcom industry at the turn of the century. Here businesses went bust as they could not justify their over inflated share prices and they didn’t stand a chance of recovery when the boom turned to bust. But what of Dubai’s fate? Surely it is built on a more solid sustainable foundation?

If you judge Dubai on its image, then the brand equity has taken a hard hit. Dubai needs a stronger idea, one based on more than just short termism, financial reward and the glamorous set. A brand idea that signifies what’s great about the region, its rich heritage, its unique multicultural Arab and Western community and all that it has to offer. Right now Dubai needs a brand that will work hard to regain the trust and confidence of the people that visit, live and work in the region.

Brand Dubai is vulnerable. The region needs to look within to really identify what it stands for and use that to build a firm brand strategy based on values and culture. Dubai has learnt the hard way; global assumptions are tough to change, but if the city looks to project its reality rather than its image, perceptions will follow suit. Only then can it start to carve out a uniquely sustainable position in the eyes of the world.

Brand Dubai is vulnerable because Dubai is vulnerable right now.
Y’all know the story: our giddy property bubble popped, we’re super-over-leveraged and a severe globally synchronized slowdown is going down taking our trade and tourism with it. How do you put a positive spin on all that?
Although Dubai has made some major missteps in its short history, it is also caught up in a perfect storm- one that’s hurting most of the world’s globalized cities. Indeed, the more open, outward looking the city, the more punishing the effect of the slowdown seems to be (China aside thanks to massive state intervention). Dubai trail-blazed the open approach in the region, zealously integrating into the globalized economy. The strategy was sound, the foolhardy debt-fueled funding strategy much less so.

The comparison with the Dot-Com bubble is instructive. Most bubbles are based on a real market story that is overcome by a collective bout of irrational exuberance. Lets recall that eBay, Amazon and Salesforce were created alongside the Pets, etoys and Boo.coms. Even more pertinent is the realization that some amazingly innovative companies emerged out of the bubble’s wreckage – Google, Facebook etc – that took advantage of the oversupply (network, bandwidth etc in this case). I expect a similar pattern to emerge in Dubai.

Comparative Success
Dubai has over the past decade managed to establish itself on that illustrious list of global cities: New York – Paris – London – Tokyo – Singapore – Hong Kong – Shanghai – Mumbai. Not too long ago I-Bankers were overly fond of bandying the ” “It’s Shanghai, Mumbai, Dubai or Good-Bye.” phrase around when discussing the future of their industry.
This was a success of branding rather than substance or at the very least a premature addition. But once on that list, a city’s position can be surprisingly sticky. Deservedly or not (partially in my mind), Dubai is now a global brand.

It also makes sense to look at how other global cities are faring. Brands London and New York are going through their own, admittedly much milder, existential doubts. Everyone it seems is hating on their financiers and unbridled flavors of capitalism. Of course history comforts us to their eventual rebounds and rebirths.
This is all new to Dubai, at least in scale. The city’s fundamentals remain strong and its brand should recover with its prospects. Of course there is always the risk that the government will make a complete mess of managing the downturn, but I am confident they will pull through.

Brand Dubai
Dubai’s value proposition is Vegas, Singapore, Hong Kong all rolled into one.

Is this messy schizophrenia unique to Dubai? Think of Brand New York. Universal values may include: progressive, competitive, cut-throat, tolerant, international. But the brand also means different things to different people. NY is Silicon Alley, Madison Ave, Wall St, Museum Mile. It’s also dysfunctional politics, poverty, inequality, dirty, chaos, density. It doesn’t really make sense as a whole but it comes together somehow. (Of course NY’s brand is also heavily formed by its representation in the media, much more so than most cities).

What is Brand Dubai?
Progressive (relative to the neighborhood). Ostentatious. Fast-paced. Overly-tolerant (to those looking from the Middle East), Intolerant (for those looking from the rest of the world), Glitz and Glamor, Celebrity, Arab, Moneyed.

Brands are of course (not necessarily completely truthful) representations of the underlying organization / individual / country. Brand Dubai will evolve in tandem with the city. And this will out of necessity take on a more sober, sustainable tone (Dubai will never completely shake its Vegas-ness though). I agree that ‘trust‘ (of investors, expatriates, tourists etc) will be an important pillar. Though I would love to see Dubai champion not its ‘rich heritage‘, but rather its post-national, tabula rasa nature, unburdened by tradition, determinedly future-looking.

WIll be interesting to see how the new Brand Dubai initiative run by Mona Al Marri goes. The National:

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, has officially established the Dubai Media Affairs Office “Brand Dubai” to co-ordinate media affairs regionally and internationally.

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To the MBA Class that graduated in 2002, the experience sounds eerily familiar. They were the ones who witnessed firsthand what September 11, Enron, and the dot-com bust did to the job market during their two years in B-school. At some schools, five and six job offers to each student dipped to one offer per three students. Many had to put dreams of switching careers on hold. Others accepted positions that were lower on the corporate ladder than expected. For some it took more than a year to find a job, but they survived to tell the tale.

Can the Class of 2009 learn from the experiences of the class that graduated into the last downturn seven summers ago?

These times are especially trying for career switchers as employers will often prefer candidates with industry experience. Most of the students interviewed did manage to achieve their career goals but not straight out of school.

“If you can see a position as a stepping stone to where you eventually want to get to, take it,” advises Amy Brooks, Stanford ‘02 who joined Bain & Co on graduating before ultimately breaking into the sports industry – her original post-MBA goal.

Key take-aways seem to be the importance of relentless focus, and an openness to a meandering route. The students in the article ended up at companies including Google (via News Corp), GE, Nokia (via China) and Siebel, NBA (via Bain).

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Minding Michael Part One : A Good Time

Qool DJ Marv Aural Memoirs & the Buttamilk Archives

Mark Gimein writes in New York Magazine:

The dominance of Michael Jackson in music was paralleled at the beginning of the ’80s by the dominance of Steven Spielberg’s E.T. and Raiders of the Lost Ark and George Lucas‘ Star Wars sequels in the movies. The Empire Strikes Back (1980), E.T. (1982), and Return of the Jedi (1983) each sold (in the United States) more than twice as many tickets the year they were released as the No. 2 movie, and Raiders of the Lost Ark came very close to that mark in 1981.

Over the years, a lot of folks—some worried about how to sell movies and records, some worried about the state of the culture, some peering into the future of media—have seesawed back and forth about how much blockbusters like these will rule the culture business. The most influential best-seller of the 1990s on the subject was economist Robert H. Frank’s Winner Takes All Society, which argued that more and more of the spoils in every field would be concentrated among a few winners. On the other hand, more recently, Wired editor Chris Anderson, in The Long Tail, argued the opposite: that media was progressing toward an ever-growing “long tail” of niche interests.

Minding Michael Part Two : Dreamer

Qool DJ Marv Aural Memoirs & the Buttamilk Archives

So is this the end of Pop? Of course not, but the era of universal global blockbusters may have passed.

Oliver Wang explains this from a DJ’s perspective:

Anyone who has every DJed any party, anywhere knows that when everything else fails, you can always put on some MJ and it’s like Insta-Party. As a fellow DJ wrote, “MJ has always been the most “guaranteed go-to” artist for DJs in the history of DJs.” True that.

The thing is…it’s so easy to get the party started with MJ, it’s like an unfair advantage over the audience. It’s so easy that I’ve usually avoided playing anything too obvious by MJ simply because…it’s too easy.

And I was thinking: who else comes close to having that kind of power? The only artist even in the conversation is Prince but even then, we’re talking about Purple Rain-era Prince mostly whereas with MJ, you can drop everything from “I Want You Back” (1970) to “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” (1979) to “Billie Jean” (1982) to “Smooth Criminal” (1987) and it’s on like Donkey Kong.

His MJ mix is required listening.

Eminem, Radiohead, JT and Beyonce are all incredible artists but I can’t imagine any of them having the universal impact that MJ had. Gimein talks about the emergence of a fat middle:

In general the mega-blockbusters of the early ’80s have given way to a bigger clump of competitors jostling in the upper decks of hit, close-to-hits, could-be-hits, and near-hits.

The single hit has given way to the multi-blockbuster summer.

Not quite the end of Pop then, but the end of Pop as we have known it, as epitomized by MJ.

Sonic Tributes
Jay Electronica

Erykah Badu and The Roots

DJ Premier

Dilla / Tribe / Ali | HIStory remix

The Roots / Jimmy Fallon

Druffalo

More MJ amusement from NY MAG:

There’s a fun and unnecessary blogosphere fight breaking out between two interchangeable popular cultural commentators- The New Yorker’s Malcom Gladwell and WIRED’s Chris Anderson – around Anderson’s latest book Free: The Future of a Radical Price and Gladwell’s disparaging review of it and Anderson’s rebuttal.

The funny thing is these guys are mirror images of each other. Anderson overstates his case (a classic Gladwell trait) and Gladwell misconstrues the premise (as Anderson is prone to do), both call-and-response capture the zeitgeist (another shared habit) and throughout they overgeneralize based on limited anecdotal examples.

Seth Godin comes out on Anderson’s side (as would I if I was taking sides), and ends his post with this gem which summarizes why it’s such an exciting time to be thinking about / participating in media right now:

Neatness is for historians. For a long time, all the markets for attention-based goods are going to be messy, which means that there are going to be huge opportunities for people (like you?) able to get that most precisous asset (our attention) for free. At least for a while.

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I am hoping to spend a term at Haas / Berkeley in my second year so this was especially interesting to me. Part of the allure is practical:

Thanks to its proximity to Silicon Valley, Haas sends plenty of graduates into the technology industry and numerous start-ups. (Facebook and Amazon are recruiting on campus today.)

But just as important is the Haas and West Coast / Valley culture:

The recession appears to have reinforced the sense of camaraderie that Haas students and alumni say is a particular hallmark of the school.
There is much talk of co-operation, teamwork and what Haas staff members refer to as an approach to business that involves “confidence without attitude”. To some business schools, which laud individual effort and achievement while inculcating a certain intellectual arrogance, all this talk of collegiality may sound flaky. But I can’t help thinking as I walk back down the hill to the subway that Haas’s philosophy will have much greater resonance in a post-credit-crunch world.

And then of course there’s this:

Other interesting / relevant bits from the diary include international students’ funding issues:

Those most feeling the pinch are non-American applicants, who comprise on average at least one-third of each incoming class at Haas. To improve matters, Professor Lyons says that the school is raising scholarship funds from donors and working with other schools and bodies such as the Graduate Management Admission Council to find more money for students in need.

And advice (that goes against what quite a few students seem to be seeking out) from Peter Johnson- Haas’ Director of Admissions- who:

Has seen a steady growth in the number of people putting themselves forward who don’t really know what they want to do with their degree. Some candidates seem to just want the badge and a glorified job-placement service. “They expect the school to help them find themselves,” Mr Johnson explains. “But no business school can really do that”.

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‘There is something about MBAs and the schools that train them which brings out the ire in otherwise mild-mannered people‘ the article begins before highlighting some of the less stereotypical MBA career paths (NGOs, education, etc).

I am unashamedly on the ‘Business is Social Development‘ side of thinking, which I think partly reflects my roots in the emerging world where the the luxury of doing good is secondary to actually having something to do.

There’s no doubt there is a lot of soul searching (and business re-strategizing) happening at the schools (and with students / MBAs).
Do MBAs fuck up? Are some of them unethical? Of course but that has more to do with being human than being a B-School grad. Although I am finding a minority of MBA students are almost completely focused on the potential financial rewards of the degree which may or may not imply more receptiveness to future unethical behavior, most students are much more interested in making an impact than making a mint.

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I joined last year’s tours in the UAE and China and the experience was really influential in tipping my decision to choose CBS. The entrepreneurial energy that John Shoaf brought to the whole thing was super-exciting and the group that came to Dubai were amazingly diverse, fun, intelligent and curious.

Sekhar Suryanarayanan took some cool photos of the Kenya safaris (mostly animals / landscapes etc).

Can you share a little bit of your profile with us? Education / work / GMAT etc? – whatever you’re comfortable with

I graduated with Honors from Stanford in 2006 and joined BCG immediately after. I’ve been with them for almost 3 years, and have recently taken a 2 year leave of absence to complete my MBA.

Most of my work with BCG has been in the Middle East, but I’ve also worked in Europe and North America.

GMAT score of 720.

What advice would you give to prospective students from the Middle East looking to apply to business school?

During my application process, I heard and read a lot of very similar advice: “know why you are applying”, “think about and develop a compelling story/angle”, “do your research about the schools/programs”, etc etc. I guess the reason why so many different sources were saying similar stuff, was because most of this advice is true. I found a lot of it to be pretty useful, and so I don’t think I’ll be able to add much to that.

The one thing I would add though is that students from the Middle East should leverage their experiences in the region, because business schools are looking for students with a variety of different backgrounds and perspectives.

I think we have all have very unique and interesting stories to tell, and certainly different from many prospective students applying from more “traditional” bschool applicant pools, such as the US, China and India.

Our region makes us compelling, and therefore we should use it!

How long did you spend preparing for the applications, GMATs etc?

I did the GMAT twice. I got a 680 the first time and a 720 the second time.

While 680 seems like an OK score, the reason I retook it was because there was a large gap between my math performance and verbal performance (I’ve never been great with numbers). So I retook it and focused on math studying the second time around to push the math percentile a bit further up.

Each time, I studied for about 3 weeks. The first time in between work assignments, and the second time during a 2 week vacation.

I applied to three schools, one in each round. Each application took about 5-6 weeks to complete, with the second and third applications taking less time because I wasn’t starting from scratch.

Everyone writes applications differently, but broadly speaking there are really only two ways to go. I got a lot of advice saying that I should spend more time thinking and less time writing. However, I preferred to write my thoughts down as early as possible and keep refining until I was pleased with the end result.

How were the interviews?

The interviews varied a great deal, and in hindsight were really useful in getting an initial impression about the culture of the school.

Two of the three schools I applied to had interviews with alumni. These were generally slightly more conversational and had a slightly more relaxed atmosphere. They were pretty much ‘as advertised’: an opportunity for the school to learn about you, and for you to learn about the school.

The third school had an interview with a member of the admissions committee. This had a more formal tone and felt more like a job interview and less like a ‘get to know you’ session.

Each interview required different types of preparation, but the takeaway for me from all three experiences was that its necessary to know your application story inside out, and be prepared to talk about your application in great detail.

What’s your feeling on the differences between Stanford and Harvard and how will you decide which program is for you?

Tough question!

Both are obviously great schools, and it was an extremely difficult decision, and was based largely on personal reasons.

However, there were a couple of important differences I was considering:

Since I am planning to return to the Middle East post-MBA, I believe that Harvard edges out Stanford in terms of brand recognition and brand value in the Middle East.

Further, the alum networks of Harvard are more extensive than Stanford, particularly in the Middle East and South Asia. This may result from a much larger and slightly more international class

Lastly, since I attended Stanford for undergrad, I opted for Harvard to experience a new school and city.

What are you planning on doing post-MBA and how does B-School get you closer to it?

My long term goal is to work for the government of Dubai or a Dubai government owned company. An MBA, combined with the experience I will gain from BCG immediately after my MBA, will provide me with the tools to be successful in a management position with a key Dubai organization.

Moreover, I am hoping that my MBA will provide access to a network of individuals that will assist in my career development

Any final advice for prospective B-School applicants?

Not really advice, but encouragement. I found the application process to be a very rewarding experience, even before I received an acceptance. The process gives you the opportunity to step back and think deeply about where you’ve come from, where you would like to go, and what is important to you. I think it’s a rare opportunity and you probably won’t be forced to think about these questions again in your career. Take advantage of it!

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