Let’s face it: regardless of industry, globalisation punched each of us in the gut–and hard. The very nature of competition mutated—and not just in the cliched China-beats-everybody kind of way. In the design world (note: advertising is not part of the design world, at best it trades in the commodity of design) global networks leveraged reach, knowledge and a client roster to sail ahead, albeit fuelled by winds of mediocrity. The more systematised a service offering, the easier it became to scale–a phenomena amongst all major industries in the last 20 years.

In the 90′s, creative shops were of 3 kinds: branding firms, advertising agencies and marketing shops. The first disruption in the design world was digital—a fringe phenomenon largely disregarded by the industry as a fad rather than the glue that has come to define genuinely meaningful brand experiences today.

I was fortunate enough to have been amongst the “crazies” blowing the trumpet of an impending digital relevance when I founded my first agency (a little digital shop called 13thStudios in 2001). A subsequent acquisition and a board-influenced change of direction towards the formulaic ‘ad agency’ model marked the end of my interest both personally and professionally (I was marginalized and kicked-out of the very company I had founded four years earlier).

Out of the Box? What Box?

Even when I started again from scratch (an agency called Xische & Co.) with a self-professed vision to remain painfully agnostic to industry-trends (the business of media buying and 15% commission, for starters), the unspoken goal was always to scale. Size was on top of the list of what would denote success for me and my partner. We positioned ourselves as a ’boutique’ yet somehow unwittingly always went to bed with a plan to grow into a boutique, just one that was massive!

With an incidental reputation as the guys that take on just a couple of projects a month, to ones that go as far as send a pre-prepared letter declining a new client for not fitting the bill, we started on a path to discovering our key strength, without ever for a second realising it.

We realised clients would approach us when their challenge didn’t fit the typical compartment that was labeled web, or brand, or interactive. Or in many cases, they would come to us for a specific but tiny requirement. They’d come and talk to us while we listened intently. Then while the many challenges they impassioned upon us started crystallising in my head, so did a crazy gamut of ways to bridge them. Most of the time, to the dismay of our project managers, these solutions hazily floating in my head would need us to create new ways of working on the project, and almost with 100% certainly, fall into unchartered territories, across many disconnected disciplines to boot.

After listening carefully, when one of the team members would present our credentials and talk about the 50 different ways we’ve worked with clients in the past, there was always this look of both shock and relief on the faces of our new potential client. It would be like a torrid affair thereafter. But trouble surfaced with practiced certainty, each time.

Choosing Between Big and Different

Every time we would take on a hugely profitable, but creatively-redundant project, we spotted a recurring theme of 3 major issues almost every time. We couldn’t compete with the giant factory agencies on a) delivery times, b) costs, and perhaps most notably c) a ‘sir-yes-sir’ agreeability.

For many years, without much deep introspection, it always remained about winning a competitive bid where we would invariably by the tiny agency thrown into the shortlist for good measure. Being small was supposed to be our strength, and here we were, starting to believe it was our greatest weakness. We were trying to change the rules of the game, while foolishly playing right into the very rules that made the field anything but level.

What we really needed to do was to bow out gracefully, and play in a different game altogether. But we didn’t.

Finding Your Hook Shot, Then Using It

How do we compete with the factories offering off-the-shelf solutions that are cheaper, or built-from-scratch alternatives with 50-man teams quicker than anything we could put together?

The answer came to us not so long ago, after years of failing and never understanding why. We needed to stop pretending to do what they did, and walk away from the usual brief. Our strength as the little guy was agility. Our ethos had been to treat each client as a fresh sheet of paper, with infinite possibilities of how we solved their problems. At Xische, we call this hybrid consulting—the foundation of our business model. We created solutions that are so unique, that by their very DNA, useless to any other client but them. This made it harder for us, but at least we knew it’s what we could compete on.

The only way to beat the big boys is by being in the business of connecting dots that they won’t bother to acknowledge, because they need to rake in more projects just to pay bills. Scale for our business comes from walking away from the typical project, focussing on relationships that evolve with clients, the profitability of charging higher for what we bring to the table, and that fuzzy-but-comforting feeling the client walks away with.

Eleven years in, we intend to remain in this business—we just like it better.

This post was first published on the Xische & Co. Blog

Last week, I happen to attend Kyoorius Designyatra 2012–an alarmingly inspiring event that bridges the divide between the popular irrelevance of design as a concept, and it’s real global impact. With speakers (some of whom I now call friends) as diverse as design heads of global conglomerates to rural revolutionaries of disruptive innovation, I expected little more than another event cheekily camouflaging itself behind the neocool corporate mantra of design thinking.

On the closing day, I was asked (yes, via Twitter) to share my thoughts on stage. It started out as a little list I scribbled (read: typed on my iPhone) minutes prior to finding myself before a thousand inspired minds. Humbled by several requests to share the list, I put forth my key 7½ take-aways from the event.

Your wife determines everything. (Read: happy wife, happy life).

Courtesy of Robert Wong and Bill Lunderman.

When its from your heart and with humility, money, success, and in some cases your wife coming back, just happen eventually.

Courtesy of Ambrish Arora, Nic Roope and Arunachalam Muruganantham.

When designers move up from the kids table, beautiful things emerge.

Courtesy of Robert Wong and Rodney Edwards.

Branding, marketing, design, advertising, when stripped bare, is nothing but storytelling.

Courtesy of Masashi Kawamura and Kentaro Kimura.

Don’t design things. But the experiences they create.

Courtesy of Karl Heiselman, Bill Lunderman and Joachim Sauter.

A picture is greater than 1000 words; but typefaces make pictures out of words again.

Courtesy of Hanif Kureshi, Paul Barnes, Bruno Maag and Marian Bantyes.

A man can go through his entire life and never truly understand the hardships of a woman. Unless he happens to be Arunachalam. We need to try a hell of a lot harder as men.

Courtesy of Arunachalam Muruganantham.

(½) There’s no perfect time to get started on your dream. Start playing–now. (As in, stop reading this blog post and get started this very moment)

Courtesy of Nic Roope.

Hat tip to my newfound friend Rajesh Kejriwal for igniting, and seven years on, tirelessly ensuring a design movement continues in India. And for the great company, Wisam Amid and Nehal Ahmed.

More about Kyoorius Designyatra here. And lookup #kdy12 on Twitter & Instagram.

Social media has taken the same trajectory as the web did a decade ago. But despite the much-touted ‘equal opportunity’ banner social media gets branded with today, it isn’t an entirely accurate picture.

I accept the chapter in history books to be written in the near future profiling Facebook’s ouster of telephones as the single most used channel of communication in the world; and it will happen. If the virtual revolutions of Tunisia and Egypt have reinforced the power of Facebook and nudged outliers like Twitter to the front, they have also given new meaning to how once again (like AOL in the 1990′s and Microsoft and Nokia in the 2000′s) real power lies with gatekeepers of this information. Facebook et al will remain the voice of democratic ambition, only until these “free” services deem it fitting to their agenda. Moreover, as these boot-strapped startups grow to become major corporations, advertising revenue will dictate innovation, or the inherent lack thereof in the future. We — the users — due to our dwindling ability to break free from homogenization, will accept mediocrity, ‘make do’ with the situation and feed the vicious cycle of complacency.

This, to me, is where the web will potentially begin it’s second downfall; into a pre-curated Walmart-like experience. Unless real communication from real people stays truly distributed — on more than simply a few major networks — the Internet as a medium will no longer remain egalitarian. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and others of the ilk are exceptional devices on their own merit, but will soon resemble the dominance of the mighty television networks in the 1950′s. The danger lies in content that is both conceived, and exists primarily on, these social networks alone. Our complacency, coupled with growing ease of creating content on major social networks, will make publishing ideas elsewhere (like personal blogging) a grueling affair in comparison. The numbers prove this: Facebook for example, is growing at 700,000 new users every 24 hours. That’s almost a million people every day, most of whom have never published anything on the Internet until that first status update.

Create often. Share often. But it might be worthwhile spreading it far and wide. After all, it’s not like the Internet is running out of real-estate any time soon.

(The image above is a snapshot of the Egyptian uprising on Twitter by Fast Company).

Every year, a singular protagonist soars into the collective psyche of a people. While Time Magazine might have decreed Facebook’s Zuckerberg its choice, ‘entrepreneurship’ has emerged centre-stage in the UAE (39 this year), but not without its worthy nemeses.

Several magnanimous events galvanised this new-found entrepreneurial thirst, and it rapidly became en vogue for smaller stories to be celebrated across mass media channels. In Dubai, there was an unprecedented re-emergence of the city’s beginnings as a business hub with a promise of a new breed of entrepreneurs. This was further fuelled by another sub-plot that reflects its global counterpart: the rise of social media this year.

Pull back the legendary ‘boom’ decade, Dubai seemed to have gradually gone from being an incubator of ‘small ideas’ that can grow big, to one that supported only ‘big ideas’ that can grow even bigger. This year marked an attempted return to small ideas once again. However, the city’s presiding trader-mindset is still disproportionately elevated to the single most important tenet of its business psyche. While 2010′s renewed zeal has catalysed real dialog between budding entrepreneurs and investors, bigger paradigm-shifts have yet to follow suit. Entrepreneurs that are not traders still find themselves on roads less travelled; essentially, outliers with little precedent to fall back on. Dubai has a lot more to offer than re-exported goods and plots of land on man-made islands.

To compound the trade-elitism in play, the term ‘entrepreneur’ made its debut into the mainstream this year. But with little education, scarce legislative support for startups and virtually no incubation opportunities, here’s hoping the sustainability of this new found fixation will not suffer the fate of the proverbial bubble we are all too familiar with in Dubai.

Having said that, the catalysts for creating an entrepreneurial revolution have arrived, and are set to change the landscape in 2011.

Read the full article Dubai & The UAE in 2010: City States In Flux

Who Dares Wins

Entrepreneurs, and the small businesses they engender, are the lifeblood of the new economy where emphasis is slowly shifting to the hyper local. With products and services specifically targeted to the communal markets they serve, startups are often responsible for catalysing not just pecuniary well-being but also cultures and sub-cultures. Despite the cards being sometimes stacked against them, several young entrepreneurs in Dubai have started viable businesses through dint of competence and persistence.

Danish Farhan
CEO, Xische

Ask Danish Farhan why he chose to become an entrepreneur and he shrugs wryly, saying “I knew how to do little else.” The autodidactic CEO of Xische may have a point. He did the rounds of the London Film School, American University of Dubai and American University of Sharjah before realising academia was perhaps not his forte. He worked with Emirates Airlines for three years, after which he took on a research and forecasting role with IBM at 18. According to him, Xische was set up to “help businesses answer the very questions I had been asking them in my role as researcher.”

But Xische was almost the victim of its own success. It expanded rapidly, and was acquired by once-client Future Pipelines. Soon, Farhan found himself being marginalised and the company he founded being taken in directions he did not like. Eventually he decided to exit, keeping the brand name he had legally registered. In 2004, Farhan decided to rebuild Xische. He had learnt his lesson and decided to grow organically. He has never had more than 20 people on the payroll since, and is anxious not to lose the intimacy and flexibly his small business offers.

While Xische may have the soul and spirit of a small boutique consultancy, it boasts a healthy turnover of over $11 million per annum. With concerns including a technology house and an interior design company, the group does over $20 million in business a year.

Farhan is determined to keep thinking big by thinking small. He makes clear that Xische is not a supplier for its clients but a representative that manages suppliers on the clients’ behalf. He says, Xische is a hybrid consultancy because it combines three basic tenets of business: the strategy that is the core of the business, the brand, which is the strategy manifesting through tangible and intangible artefacts and sprinkles of facilitating technology.

Fellow businessperson, ex-client and former senior vice-president of Internet Pictures Corporation (iPix) Tim Brookes, says that Farhan, originally from India, has been impeccable in maintaining a people-centric innovative streak.

“It’s been interesting to say the least watching this young man and his firm consistently stay ahead of the curve for almost a decade now.”

Not many individuals in the Middle East can speak with as much authority as Dubai’s Danish Farhan, CEO of Xische. Having lived in Dubai for well over 20 years, and having a client roster that boasts the region’s leading brands, he offers insight into the future of media in the Middle East and the growing role of technology in the region.

Tell us about the advertising landscape in a post-recession Dubai?

Put simply, things have changed dramatically… all for the better.

While consumer spending receded initially with the recession, the real winners in Dubai have been the clients. Advertisers now have more interesting and cost-effective alternatives to consider. Meanwhile, on the consumer front, there has been a collective acceptance of the ‘web-as-a-tool’ paradigm in Dubai. Clients are spending much less, but are building real value online and mobile engagement with customers now open to this new dialog. Local research proves this with astonishing glory.

At Xische, we have focused on connecting the dots between brand and digital for a while now. Clients now engage our expertise much earlier in the food chain. This makes for better informed go-to-market strategies and a far more effective brand footprint that is highly customized. We love not having to convince clients to rethink convention; fringe-tactics within the UAE’s advertising landscape are now decidedly mainstream.

How is the Middle East adapting to digital communications?

The digital trend of ‘instant-everything’ (or ‘nowism’ as we call it) has crept up as a result of an entire generation growing up with access to free downloads, instant Wikipedia referencing, Google searches, and status updates. The shift arrived later than the more connected Western nations, but is exploding at an alarming rate. The Middle Eastern user base — and this has been confirmed by recent surveys — is a very heavily peer-induced demographic.

Appearances matter considerably, and usage of new tools like social media, mobile and AR are being driven with similar motives. The slower adopters have been the brands themselves, as old-school managers battle to realize ‘digital’ means more than just a microsite, banner ad or SMS campaign. Some key brands have taken the leap, and garnered spectacular results.

Social Media: the country’s first international feature film ‘City of Life‘, and the region’s fastest growing financial institution RAKBANK. At last count, we found more than 400 UAE-based companies that were on Twitter alone. There is no doubt social media has been the most noticeably prominent trend with up to 20% monthly user base growth.

Mobile as a platform: mobile is still in its infancy, but it will pick up going by the rate of inquiries we get daily from major brand names eager to capitalise. We know for a fact that 1 in 4 mobile subscriptions in the country are 3G data enabled; that makes for a captive market that simply hasn’t been exposed to the merits of mobile access at arm’s length, 24/7. While we see mobile sites being embraced by the big players like Emirates, Du, and daily newspapers, the majority of organisations have yet to think about their mobile strategy.

Apps are gaining momentum with the growing market penetration of iDevices (iPod, iPhone, iPad) and Android-powered phones. When we launched the Formula 1 app last year for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, we were met with some interesting reactions, including our favorite: “We didn’t know you could load apps from the UAE!” A testament to this is Abu Dhabi government’s media zone twofour54 launching an initiative called AppsArabia — a dedicated marketplace for app developers and end-clients to communicate. They’ve gone as far as launching an App Fund for developers with innovative ideas in need of seed funding.

Augmented reality has been the slowest to grab the attention of brands. This is largely due to the innate complexity of the concept of AR, which makes it difficult for most brand managers to comprehend conceptually and then later sell to their management. The only real implementation in this market so far has been with a leading American automotive brand and a few publications.

Arabic Digital Content: I think the real push from the UAE and increasingly Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, will be scale of Arabized content produced in the near future. This will undoubtedly have an impact on a global level. There is only so much Western-driven context that is acceptable to the general audience using social media or mobile apps. For uptake to grow exponentially, culturally relevant, language sensitive content is key.

What current/emerging trends make you optimistic about the future?

We’re excited to finally see locally-conceived brands being accepted by both the business community and end-customers. Dubai, despite its glittering lifestyle studded with international brand names, has largely been borrowed from the rest of the world. With the exception of government-linked entities, few home-grown brands have managed to break ground internationally. This is changing and we’re happy to be a part of that evolution in Dubai where indigineous talent and ideas are paying off.

What other designers, thinkers or companies are inspiring you these days?

We’ve always been fans of the IDEO team; we think they personify what we aspire to become for this region. Mishaal Al Gergawi, an Emirati commentator and writer has caught our attention with his approach of challenging the status quo socially, economically and culturally in the UAE. Television’s silent phenomenonMad Men has really made us stop and rethink the way the world around us determines so much of what we think we know, and in turn, do. Highly inspiring for its extraordinary cultural, political and stylistic debate.

Anything else you would like to add?

If there is one thing Dubai’s version of the recession has done, it’s weeded out the ‘overnight’ players in the media industry. This city has long been popular for its ‘middle-man’ approach whereby a company, no matter what their focus, claimed to undertake a task nomatter what the required expertise for the job. Back-door outsourcing agreements thrived, driving little or no value for clients. It is refreshing to see this entire ecosystem dismantling rapidly, leaving companies that actually care about what they do for their clients. Intent, nomatter how small, makes all the difference.

Earlier this evening, BBC World aired a much publicised documentary that immediately labels itself with calculated negativity in the title “Dubai Dashed Dreams.” Embedded above is the Arabic version. I will post the English feature as soon as it surfaces via legal sources.

I, for one, feel compelled to document my rant due to the unsettling nature of this seemingly objective documentary. The piece features four characters: a prominent Emirati, a bankrupt Englishman, an Egyptian architect and a Bangladeshi security guard — all with their versions of a newly recessed Dubai.

While these 52 minutes document a genuinely sad reality for three out of the four protagonists, two sore points stand out with calculated precision:

1 – One cannot help but notice the slow, yet crafty disparagement of Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, and his vision. Cynicism aside, several of his quotes — cleverly spliced in between gargantuan footage of Dubai’s most famous icons of success; the Palm Islands, et al — gradually paint Dubai as a lost cause, and its leader, a narrow-minded dictator. It goes as far as to state that Sheikh Mohammed’s ambition outweighed logic, disregarded Dubai’s oldest families, and has been fueled by a singular thirst to realise his father’s dream. If watched without other reference points, the feature almost caricatures him as an arrogant sensationalist, using out-of-context quotes such as “Dubai is the world,” or “Dubai does not need investors. Investors need Dubai.”

2 – A rift between Abu Dhabi and Dubai constantly takes centre-stage throughout the feature; glorifying an epic struggle between the cities, as if in the midst of a cold war. First, it states Sheikh Rashid’s (the founder of Dubai and father of Sheikh Mohammed) apparent displeasure at ‘joining the federal union’ proposed by Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Zayed. It then sprinkles a few cliched references to Abu Dhabi’s sensational bail-out of Dubai. The controversial Burj Dubai renaming is hypothesised to be a debt-enforced act of humiliation. Throughout the documentary, author Christopher Davidson’s comments about a deep-rooted federal dysfunction as the reason for Dubai’s financial woes, are especially surprising.

I do not aspire to defend this city with blind faith, either. The reality of Dubai’s lack of bankruptcy laws, long-term residency, and minimum wage for its labourers, is undeniably sad. Prominent Emirati businessman Yahya Lootah’s denial of the ’500 Dirhams’ wage that workers routinely cite, was unfortunate. The eventual arrest of the British businessman too, will resonate with more and more people amidst today’s financial climate.

This is no victory for Brand Dubai. Although the BBC artfully camouflages this documentary as a balanced piece of journalism, it stings like an age-old colonial souvenir: a mine-field of artificially planted conflicts among colonial footholds of the British empire. The closing scene dramatically juxtaposes footage of Sheikh Mohammed walking away into a barren and deserted horizon, with one of his quotes — at first questioning whether he has chosen the right path for his people, followed by his conviction, and intention to continue in its pursuit.

Perhaps my reaction has been disproportionate, but this finale, like much of the documentary, seems deliberate in its ridicule of Dubai.

Follow the discussion on Twitter here.

Dubai: 2000′s. A bustling economy is poised for unchartered growth as the world watches a tiny city-state make its mark. The city quickly rises out of sands into global top ten lists: quality of life, business-friendliness, tax-freedom, autonomy, cultural tolerance, trade volume, GDP year-on-year growth, tourism destination, etc. The real-estate sector explodes with the advent of foreign ownership laws. The city emulates its own successful cities-within-a-city “freezone” model to diversify into a broad spectrum of verticals – media, technology, industry – with several more penned. The national airline gains prominence outflying global giants. Vegas is set to be dwarfed by Dubai’s hospitality plans. Visible from space, several palm-shaped islands are designed to add miles of shoreline to the city. Brand “Dubai” becomes synonymous with entrepreneurial ambition.

Dubai: 2010. Dubai elevates into a case study at Harvard Business School. It defies conventional wisdom as the world watches. It is now 2009. The proverbial bubble has burst. The global press exaggerates the plight of the city to paint epic end-of-the-world scenarios. The real-estate sector swells through the decade into an disproportionate economic focus. While the city continues to score well on most counts, the widely unregulated real-estate sector unhinges Dubai’s otherwise organic growth into an unstable landslide. A domino-effect ensues, leading to a full-year of economic contraction. Credit-fuelled lifestyles and over-leveraged mortgages mature into catastrophic debt levels for a substantial majority of the expatriate population. Inevitably, businesses built on rocky foundations shut shop. Cost of living, despite tax-free income, inflates to inexplicable levels competing with London and Manhattan. People are forced to flee.

Dubai: 2020. Another decade is quickly unraveling. In contrast to popular lore, the city has begun charting an unprecedented course–one of unified resurgence. It no longer remains simply about Dubai. Instead, a reinvigorated country emerges. Fox News has aired a sensational series of features that likens Dubai to the lost city of Atlantis. Meanwhile, a slow cultural renaissance is emerging, born out of the massively critical global outlook of Dubai. Globally, an inevitable power shift ensues, from the West to the Western lands of Asia. The city of Dubai, once again, finds itself on a strategic advantage. This time around, a key facet of the city’s foundation is its soft infrastructure. Although trade continues to thrive, the city has successfully embraced a true knowledge economy. To American President Palin’s initial dismay and political wrangling, Dubai now successfully plays host to global headquarters of the two most definitive companies of the decade: Google Inc. and Apple Inc. The country has embraced the ‘Khaleeji’ — a common currency across the Gulf. A joint Central Bank is co-located between Riyadh and Dubai. Home-based businesses begin to flourish, fueled by innovative government schemes. A revolutionary alternative fuel cell is developed in a garage in Al Barsha. Nasdaq Dubai mushrooms into the largest stock exchange East of New York. Emirati artists routinely exhibit at the Tate Modern, while the Louvre Abu Dhabi predominantly features a fusion of artistic works from the country. Street art emerges as the defining element of the city’s walking districts. The city has transformed into a bilingual example of cross-cultural harmony, where it is no longer expected of the nationals alone to speak in English, while their foreign counterparts make no effort to learn the language of the land. It is no longer uncommon to see Emiratis working alongside their expatriate counterparts. A strikingly unique community has spawned out of mutual understanding and respect, never quite seen before.

The most potent everyday reality remains this: a vision that once united a people–from all walks of life, faith and aspiration–is being rebuilt, one day at a time.

I’m guessing you’ve seen one recently.

Companies like Nielson and Information Resources (IRI) spawned the explosion of analysing ‘analysis’ in the early 80′s. With the internet and more recently, social media, analysis has become the backbone of how business works. This in itself is a stellar concept. Continuing to serve clients without understanding what every nuance really means is like running a business in complete isolation, allowing only one’s ego in. Focus groups solved that problem very early on. Today social media metrics tally up results — unfocus groups I call them. But what do you do with the results? You analyse them, ofcourse.  The results hold a promise of discovering the problems, and ideally unraveling the formulae for their resolution.

This process is ofcourse logically sound. But with the ever-increasing need to course-correct business decisions with agility, decision makers have started to rely almost wholly on ‘analytics,’ without necessarily leading off into the hard stuff — the decisions. Simple, binary decisions that go either the yay or nay route, eventually.

Therein lies the problem of politically-correct, over-complicated, misplaced priorities.

An anecdote I found in the Harvard Business Review demonstrates the dilemma craftily. The blog cites one of the writers devising a cheap and chirpy method to manage his home finances. His wife, a meticulous accountant, would literally email analyses evaluating their income and expenditure at the end of every month. Hassled by having to trod along this exercise to figure out whether there were problems, he suggested she mark the email with either a smily face if things looked good or a sad face to indicate there were problems. It worked wonders.

If you think about it, his wife had always been empowered to evaluate their situation, but submitting analytics for another’s perusal does exactly the opposite — it takes that power away. The reader of the report must now invest time and effort to judge it. I ask: why this repetition of judgement calls? Do we really have as much collective time to spare?

Analysis will always remain key in the decision-making process. However, making sense of it has become another story. The analysis itself has somehow become the end-game. In the (very near) future, I foresee business executives seeking out a new breed of Simplification Consultants, whose sole purpose will be to interpret analysis and simplify results. Ideally, 3 slides with no more than 2 phrases each to tell it like it is. Let the numbers and figures remain meticulously annexed, and accessible should there be the need for citation.

These consultants will carry the credentials to evaluate data using measurement metrics their client needs in place. They however, unlike the analysts, will focus on the big picture ideas. The bottom lines. How, you might ask? By virtue of being multi-disciplinary in expertise — a concept I have written about in my piece The Extinction of Specialisation.

This would mean simplifying the ‘complications’ with guiding principles to keep overall corporate objectives in check, while relying signifantly on collaborative instinct. Yes, collaboration. Isolated audits will no longer remain in vogue — a concept explained in fellow commentator Mishaal Al Gergawi’s article World Collaboration Manifesto.  A network of consultants will contribute objectively on portions of analytical data by means of an ‘instinct-vote.’ Eventually, this collaborative effort, possible with the socially-connected technology already available today, will lead to s-i-m-p-l-e blueprints for decisions. Efficiency would certainly increase as a result, shrinking timeframes required to make well-informed decisions.

Until that happens, I think productivity levels of executives empowered to ‘analyse the analysis’ will continue to decline. The emphasis on actual analytical figures will far outweigh any real decisions. The quality of decisive growth will continue to dwindle. The clarity of thought, reason, and eventually, ideas will become myths. Times when we ran business with simple instinctive decisions will seem like the ‘good ol’days’ from another century.

Recommended reading: World Colloboration Manifesto by fellow-thinker Mishaal Al Gergawi and my previous article Extinction of Specialisation.

But first, as fellow critical-thinker Mishaal Al Gergawi explores in his piece (World Collaboration Manifesto - Gulf News), one of the fundamental tenets of the Industrial Age has been the commonly accepted concept of ‘specialisation.’

Our educational system seeds such thinking very early on. Followed soon afterwards by the urgent need to ‘pick’ a niche, and as a result, a career, all whilst still in high-school. Fast forward to the workplace, the ‘drone syndrome’ quickly catches on, rewarding competency development that shrinks daily into tunnel vision the size of a key-hole. The less you’re involved in, the greater your chances of success and elevation. It doesn’t nearly end there, not even close. Gradually, entire organizations ferment within this all-consuming culture, becoming collectively less relevant on a daily basis.

Like it or not, life in general doesn’t quite work that way.  And especially less in 2010 — a decade into civilization’s apparent reawakening. The ‘Knowledge Economy’ they called it. Sadly, it has remained a glorified label. This is evident in the Gulf, perhaps more prominently than many other economies today. Reasons of which to be explored in another article.

A single thing — regardless of how petty — impacts everything else. Life requires an ‘always-on’ balancing act, combining challenges that range from the individualistic to familial, from work/business to extracurricular and so on. Let me ask you this: what if we adapted the unquestioned approach of ‘specialisation’ to everyday life? What would you pick? Family or work? Personal development or greater social change? Money or contentment? Sport or politics? Paper or technology?

Unfair? Yes. Untrue? No.

Back to Da Vinci. His journals unearthed a spectacular archive of thoughts, ideas, theories and designs. Not all art, as one might imagine, but tangible scientific inventions: new kinds of clocks, a double-hulled ship, flying machines, military tanks, an odometer, the parachute, and a machine gun, to name just a few. His endeavors in art have found a place in history. But at what cost? The sheer opporunity cost of the unrealized potential makes Da Vinci’s artistic body of work, dare I say, almost pale in comparison to what could easily have been.

To take Al Gergawi’s argument a step further, I ask: does evolution stop with the end of law-firms and creative-agencies and the birth of agile and affordable freelance specialists? I think not.

I firmly believe we’re headed not only towards the death of industrially-structured service firms, but will have no choice but to embrace the concept of what I call ‘Hybrid Thinking.’ An economy where, to mirror life itself, even those individual consultants of the future will need to become multi-disciplined. Each with certain areas of greater experience than others ofcourse, but fundamentally playing the role of knowledge-bearers. Those that understand business above all, then contribute knowing full well what the bigger picture is. And not just conceptually, but tangibly and accountably.

The dark side of continually evolving technology is no doubt the collective shrinkage of the attention-span of Generations Y and Z. Attempting to explain this phenomena in itself will distract readers to another tweet. These very decision makers of tomorrow will have less patience for six specialised consulting firms, but would love six holistic opinions about everything from each of them. Just as social media highlights the innate human need to accept the opinions of those in one’s ‘circle of trust’, the managers of tomorrow will increasingly depend on these opinions, across the board. If your friend on Twitter tells you a certain restaurant serves the best breakfast in town, you’re likely to trust his/her judgement just as much as their condemnation of a certain government policy. Are they dimissed for having diverse-yet-significant opinions about equally diverse subjects? Not at all. Trust begets trust.

To add to Al Gergawi’s well-titled World Collaboration Manifesto, this is my first exploration of the internal challenges that face every individual well before a ‘greater no-holds-barred collaboration’ will come into effect.

The sooner one realizes this, the greater the chances of discovering light as we exit this tunnel of recession-hit, blame-cultured, super-centralized and uber-specialised disarray of economic darkness.