Resilience Keynote Speaker

I've just come off stage speaking at the St. Regis Hotel downtown in Dubai. I was speaking for a US company on the topic of resilience, and the role that collaboration and innovation plays in resilience. But as part of my talk, I was also talking about the resilience of Dubai, or what makes Dubai such a resilient place. Dubai was recently voted the world's most resilient city by the United Nations. And there are five reasons I believe that Dubai is such a resilient place.

Free Course!

Dubai is such a resilient place

I've just come off stage speaking here at the St. Regis Hotel downtown in Dubai. And I was speaking for a US company on the topic of resilience, and really the role that collaboration, innovation plays in resilience. But as part of my talk, I was also talking about the resilience of Dubai, or what makes Dubai such a resilient place. You may not know this, but I think Dubai was voted the world's most resilient city, recently by the United Nations. And there are really five reasons I believe that Dubai is such a resilient place. The first is around the diversity of this incredible city.

You come here, people come from all over the world meet Dubai, their home, and where they work from the build businesses from here as well. I just find it whenever I'm working with clients here in the region, the manager's diversity and the people I'm dealing with. So diversity in terms of gender, in terms of

their religion, ethnicity, where they're from in the world, also neurodiversity, that kind of element as well. And there's been loads of studies done on the impact of diversity, on making places more resilient. In fact, Ursula Burns, who's a

CEO, former chairman of Xerox America, she was here in the UAE not so long ago, speaking at national wealth, Mr. Emirati Women's Day. And one of the things that she was talking about was the idea that diversity is a driver of innovation, and the role of diversity and its impact on innovation, and resilience. And one of the I think the numbers, I saw the other day from McKinsey, that those companies who are in the top quartile of their industry, in terms of diversity of the people that work there, they have results, which think 30 to

32%, better than the other competitors in their field. So there's definitely a link between diversity and also financial performance. The second part I see here in Dubai was you notice as soon as you land is redundancy, the amount of redundancy the errors, they're always building systems for more than they actually need. It's something you really noticed when you come to the airport if you're used to airport see in the West, for example, when we go to airports in the West, it sometimes feels like there's only there's really been built for maybe a 10th of the people that are going there. But you know, my experience of ever coming here in Dubai, I'm usually from the plane out, picking up the car within, you know, minutes often. I mean, just so quick, very quick to get through immigration here, just a very quick process. And that is done on purpose. So that this sense of redundancy here is a feature, not a bug of the system has been thought about in a very, very deep way. And the third thing I see is connectivity makes the device such a resilient place. It's always connecting with other parts of the world if you notice it a lot during the pandemic when many other places in the world really closed down. But Dubai was pretty much always open. And it was a place and now that people came to connect, you know, connect connectivity in terms of traveling also connected connectivity in terms of

money, and in terms of ideas, as well. And now that the pandemic is kind of we're coming to the end of this pandemic, hopefully, Dubai is a place that so many companies, so many of my clients are choosing to use to have their conferences and their meetings, because just as the connectivity that a lot of other places, people remember that they have a memory for that. And then the fourth one I would say is adaptability, this place is always changing. Every time I come here, there's something new there adapting to new preferences, what people are wanting could be the restaurants, the hotels, the businesses here, there's just this constant drive for adaptability. And then the final one I would say is here in Dubai, they just have a culture of preparedness, I would put it this way. You know, they're planning just now for 2071, the centennial celebrations and just announced a big plan, because everything that they want to do which VR is focused on education, for example, ethics. And something I find really fascinating here is most companies I deal with here in the region, whether the smaller companies or the larger conglomerates may be operated from here in the region is that constant sense of preparedness, they understand the volatility is going to happen, whether that's inflation or energy costs, or whatever the thing may be. So they've all got multiple plans of how to deal with that there's a culture of preparedness here, which you don't sometimes find in other parts of the world as well. So for those reasons, diversity, redundancy, connectivity, adaptability, and this culture of preparedness, there is some of the reasons I feel that Dubai is such a resilient place. So I've had great fun speaking today on this topic.

I have resilient what resilient organizations in the role of innovation and collaboration, creativity, and that and now I'm going to fly on to my next event, which will be on the topic of the metaverse. I'm gonna be speaking in Milan for an engineering company on all the opportunities I'm going to call the super creative metaverse. So follow along if you've already subscribed here, make sure you subscribe and you can follow along and come with me from here in Dubai to Milan

Resilience Keynote Speaker