It's time to account for our actions

Malcolm Gladwell, the UK-born, Canadian-raised, frizzy haired journalist and author of bestselling books Blink and Tipping Point, asked me last week. Naturally I had no answer for him. He's far smarter than I am. But of course he does, and some.

Once again he has picked on a subject of the everyday that we may have all thought of at some point or another but have never attempted to answer. Luckily for us he is due to speak at the annual Leaders in Dubai conference on November 19 this year.

So what makes the Gulf so successful? It's worth exploring this in more than 500 words and I'm sure between now and November Gladwell will do his homework, yet allow me to make some suggestions.

The context for success has naturally come from oil, its rise to US$80 a barrel, availability and the planet's thirst for the black stuff. But interestingly enough, Gulf countries haven't overly relied on the raw materials they've been blessed with. They have also, and in a seriously short space of time, managed to generate a spirit of entrepreneurship, vision and business acumen from home and, more to the point abroad, in order to diversify their interests away from a depleting resource.

Over the past five years, for instance, each of the GCC countries has embarked on a series of calculated spending sprees aimed at securing the future of each nation. In the last week alone, a Middle East group led by Gulf Petroleum Qatar is looking to invest up to US$1.4bn in Malaysia, as the country's efforts in attracting the petrodollars appear to be paying off. Meanwhile, the rather mysterious Qatar Investment Authority is nearing its long thought out acquisition of Nasdaq's 30% slice of the London Stock Exchange, a purchase that would give the government a high-profile position in the scramble for dominance among the world's stock markets.

While a deal isn't certain in this case, their success has been such that Gulf governments have become braver than ever seeking better investment returns than their standard holdings of US Treasuries and testing Western politicians and institutions that often advocate free-market principles but are wary of foreign authorities owning iconic assets. It's a similar story at home. Free zones, Business Bays and Financial Harbours have sprouted up faster than you can blink and drawn in billions of dollars of secure and permanent investment from foreign shores.

As Gladwell says, it's a not a question of measuring success, it's a question of accounting for it, asking ourselves what exactly it means to be from a specific culture and to be successful? How does that affect you in ways you might not think of and factor in success?

In his own understated manner, these may be "very basic questions", but they are key to what we do and how we account for what we do.

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