Wharton’s Karl Ulrich: Three Things Needed to Grow Middle East Innovation

Reflecting on the issue of youth unemployment raised by the Arab Spring protests, Wharton professor Karl Ulrich says governments should follow some key rules to bolster innovation in the region.

“The role of government in innovation is first and foremost to create a healthy environment for innovation. That means stable regulation, strong property rights for investors, immigration and travel policies that allow the efficient flow of human resources, and fair protection of intellectual property. Next, I believe government should invest in education. I’m less enthusiastic about direct investment in specific innovation projects. I don’t think governments have demonstrated a capability to pick winners at the project or company level.”

Ulrich came to Abu Dhabi to oversee Wharton’s first innovation tournament in the region. Ulrich was impressed by the entries, which focused on sustainability projects, noting that the competitors showed the same aspirations and approach as innovators in Silicon Valley or Philadelphia.

Read the full interview here: http://bit.ly/LGdxlR

Christine Lagarde: Emerging Market Nations Will Get More Power in the IMF

Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), sees no alternative to the strict austerity policies being imposed on many peripheral European countries, says the double dip recessions in Italy and Ireland just announced come as no surprise, and notes that IMF reforms will shift 6% of current quotas to dynamic emerging and developing countries. Lagarde’s comments came in an exclusive interview with Knowledge@Wharton and media partner ParisTech Review.

Read the full story here: http://bit.ly/HWE788

Middle East Hackers Mix Attacks With Politics

When hackers in the Middle East attack, sometimes it’s not only to prove their ability to break into secure systems and steal information. Sometimes, its also about making a political statement — the most recent example dredges up historical rhetoric traded between Arabs and Israelis.

In early January, a self-proclaimed Saudi Arabian hacker announced he had accessed 400,000 Israeli credit card accounts, and targeted those he identified as supporters of ”Israeli Zionist Rabbis.” It set off a number of attacks and counterattacks that at first targeted credit card holders, but quickly focused on businesses and government entities in Israel and the Gulf.

The incidents highlight the ability of cyber criminals to carry out attacks across borders, even when corporations are aware of their threats. They also demonstrate how digital disruptions could become a tool in state conflict.

“The question that then arises is how can organizations and individuals protect themselves,” says Gurpreet Dhillon, professor of information security at Virginia Commonwealth University. “It is no longer the question of buying an ever so complex lock. It is more about ensuring that the key to the lock is not compromised.”

Read the story here: http://bit.ly/xGSdLC

Government’s thankless job: Disaster preparedness for the public

“That’ll never happen to me.” Whether it’s an auto accident or a terminal diagnosis, people seem to believe they’re exempt from the misfortune life sometimes presents. Prompted by the recent hurricane warnings in the US, the Wharton School‘s risk-management expert Howard Kunreuther explains the government’s struggle to take people’s ‘hindsight bias’ into account before the foreboding of an event.

While officials worry about the responses of the public after an event, addressing the expected dangers as well as the improbable is a main concern of the public.

The government’s role in warning the public of possible disasters and appeasing the public after the forewarned event, is a balancing act in itself.

People will make a fuss if the disaster turns out less catastrophic than predicted. That being said, they will do just the same if the event is even more disastrous.

“The disconnect is that often before the event, people will say, ‘it’s not going to happen to me,’” Kunreuther said, “but after the event there’s a feeling that someone should have helped us here, we have a reason to blame them.”

Read the story here: http://n.pr/rknVO1

Bloody Lesson from Libya and Bahrain: Guns Won’t Halt Revolution

Bahrain is regarded as a regional model for reform and hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet in the Gulf. Libya, long considered a pariah state, only rejoined the world community after ending illegal weapons programs and denouncing terrorism. But because of the brutal repression inflicted on protestors in both countries, the two now share a negative perception, say Wharton professors and other academics. This will undo any past progress in global politics and markets. Both governments will likely fall as a result, these experts add, a lesson for leaders that violence is an untenable response to calls for reform.

Read the story here: http://bit.ly/edqqye

Revolution A Boost For Facebook in the Middle East

Facebook’s fast-growing popularity with Arab youth is one reason why social media tools played such a crucial role in the region’s unrest, researchers at the Dubai School of Government tell Arabic Knowledge@Wharton. Among the facts uncovered in their first study of social media in the Arab world: Facebook penetration can be high even in countries that restrict use of the Internet, and hundreds of thousands of Arabs joined Facebook as protests intensified. Mobile networks and satellite television also played a role in rapidly deploying information, enabling Arab protestors to topple two governments and become energized to challenge more.

Read the story here: http://bit.ly/eNfREf

Arab Unrest Means ‘New Reality’ for All Governments

It is a mistake to view the mass economic protests in the Arab world as a trend limited to the Middle East, says Erwann Michel-Kerjan, managing director ofWharton’s Risk Management and Decision Processes Center. Given the protests’ speed and unclear leadership, the civil unrest that rocked North Africa and spread to the rest of the Middle East can apply to any country, and their occurrence signaled a change in the world, not unlike the events of 9/11, he adds, noting that governments can no longer afford to ignore citizen concerns surrounding economic disparity and globalization.

Read the story here: http://bit.ly/fwBZnX