First published: 18-Dec-2025 15:32:39
- Speakers highlighted the GCC’s resilience and reforms as key factors in maintaining an advantage amid uneven global growth
- Leaders agreed that while technology is advancing rapidly, judgment, capital allocation and governance are increasingly determining who pulls ahead and who falls behind in a K-shaped global economy.
- Discussions explored how compressed decision cycles are reshaping organisations and investment models, with direct implications for talent pipelines, junior roles and the future structure of work.
- Family offices emerged as a focal point, as intergenerational transitions drive a shift from wealth preservation toward private assets, direct ownership and venture building.
Abu Dhabi, UAE: With strong financial conditions and reform momentum underpinning growth across the Gulf, leaders are increasingly focused on how power, judgment and capital should be deployed for long-term advantage. These themes anchored discussions at the INSEAD Global Business Leaders Conference Week 2025, held at the business school’s Middle East Campus in Abu Dhabi, where executives, investors and policymakers gathered to assess AI’s real impact on the global economy.
Across a week of keynotes, panels and venture showcases at INSEAD’s Middle East Campus, conversations moved beyond technological capability to focus on consequence: who gains advantage, how capital is allocated, and what leadership judgment means in an environment where decision cycles are compressing and outcomes are becoming more uneven.
Kristin Skogen Lund, Chair of INSEAD’s Board of Directors, set the tone early in the week, urging leaders to constructively engage with technological change rather than resist it. “From a leadership perspective, you have to embrace it, see it as an opportunity, understand your current position and explore how to pivot into creating new possibilities.”
Discussions on leadership and organisational strategy highlighted a shared view that while advanced technologies are now embedded across industries, sustainable advantage continues to rest on capabilities machines cannot replace, including values, creativity and accountability. Several speakers noted that as these tools scale unevenly, gaps are widening between organisations that integrate judgment and capital discipline effectively and those that do not, reinforcing a K-shaped pattern of outcomes.
The regional context featured prominently throughout the programme reinforced by Jihad Azour, Director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department at the International Monetary Fund, who pointed to the Gulf’s relative resilience amid global volatility. “In this environment, the GCC stands out with its strong financial conditions, solid non-oil sector growth, diversification, and structural reforms,” he said, noting that these factors have enabled the region to perform strongly despite global uncertainty.
Azour also highlighted the scale of the region’s digital ambition. Shifting trade patterns, state-backed investment and infrastructure spending are reinforcing the Gulf’s growing influence in AI. For Xavier Anglada, Managing Director and Digital Lead for MENA and Turkey at Accenture, this combination makes the Gulf an unusually fertile testing ground. He described the region as “a unique sandbox to prove what’s next,” while cautioning that most organisations globally remain far from genuine AI maturity. Progress, he argued, depends less on isolated pilots than on continuously refreshed strategies and deep ecosystem partnerships.
Attention then shifted to capital allocation where investors and founders examined how data, automation and analytics are compressing timelines and reshaping portfolio construction, but panelists repeatedly returned to a familiar conclusion: technology may change the mechanics of investing, but it does not alter its core fundamentals.
Fahad AlSharekh, General Partner at JEDI Fund and Vice Chairman of Kamco Invest, described a clear shift in investor behaviour across the region. “AI is accelerating a fundamental shift—from being a reactive investor to becoming a proactive one,” he said.
Mezier Briefkani, Chief Portfolio Officer at 2PointZero Group, highlighted a radical example of AI’s operational impact, “Augmented our entire workforce with AI agents, making all future hiring much more deliberate and purposeful,” he said.
Still, several speakers warned against exaggerating AI’s strategic reach. Sir Martin Sorrell, Founder and Executive Chairman of S4 Capital, pointed to stark disparities in adoption across industries and markets. “What we are seeing instead is the emergence of a ‘K-shaped economy’ in AI,” he said, “where leaders pull further ahead while laggards fall behind.”
The week concluded with a focus on family offices, a cornerstone of Middle Eastern capital. As wealth transitions to a new generation, the model is shifting away from passive preservation toward venture building, private credit and direct operational involvement. At INSEAD’s panel on the future of family capital, speakers emphasised the growing role of private assets, AI-enabled decision-making and robust governance in managing intergenerational change.
Reflecting on the discussions, INSEAD Dean Francisco Veloso returned to the central tension of the week. “The task of management education”, he argued, “is not merely to teach leaders how to deploy powerful technologies, but how to do so responsibly—without losing sight of purpose, people and the long-term consequences of their choices.”
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