Competitiveness and Its Implications For Saudi Arabia

This week my work in Riyadh was interrupted by the Global Competitiveness Forum - the fourth of its kind and a rather large event. The forum focuses on the global economy in the framework of competitiveness. To explain it in a sentence, competitiveness is attempting to make the pie bigger, as opposed to competition, which seeks to get each party a bigger slice of the pie (these terms may end up in [Jabberwocky]).

I was treated to some thought provoking panels on the economic recovery (including the CEO of Blackstone), a talk by Michael Dell, a lecture by Michael Porter and the celebrated appearance of Tony Blair (who stood us up the first time because he had a meeting with the King...):


All in all the Saudis proved gracious hosts and are doing very well in many competitiveness rankings (they've moved from 67 to 13 in "ease of doing business" over the past three years). Times they are a-changin. Maybe.