Toward a technology driven economy for the EMENA region

Since the beginning of the recent world economic recession that started with the end of 2007, we have seen dramatic changes in the way economy works. Personally I am not an economist, but during the last 5 years I witnessed major changes in the way the global economy system that triggered me know to write this post on my blog. I will not enter into the details that financial analysts can talk better about, but I will emphasize on the role of technology during the past five years in shaping the current status and the future as well.

I would start with the big names and let us focus on few. The following numbers are the sales revenue according to Market Watch website:

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) went from 32.2 Billion USD to 155.97 Billion USD from 2008 till 2012

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) went from 16.59 Billion USD to 37.8 Billion USD from 2008 till 2011

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) went from 60.42 Billion USD to 73.7 Billion USD between 2008 and 2012

AMAZON (NASDAQ: AMZN) went from 14.84 Billion USD to 40.08 Billion USD between 2007 and 2011

Read these numbers well and I will discuss briefly in the coming lines. But before let us have a look about the startup economy which is mainly focused on technology trends.

In an article published by Michael Brenner in Forbes BRANDVoice online issue on April 2012, the author mentioned that “Small businesses in particular are looking to technology to provide the tools they need to meet growing needs and greater demands.”  The article names 4 trends that I tend to little bit change on:

–       Mobile Technologies

–       Social Networking

–       Cloud Computing

–       Big Data (I will have more posts in the future about this trend)

Now compiling the above with the numbers of sales revenue from the big players, one can see the relation between the technology and economy. According to a Bloomberg news article published last March, technology sector had driven the US employment market to have more demand.

What does all that mean?

Technology with no doubt had played a major role in the US economy before, and after the financial crisis, and we have seen during the last years more investments going toward the technology sector like crazy. There are unbelievable numbers in term of money that angel investors, incubation associations, and crowdsourcing organization are spending on technology. Take few examples here:

KickStarter

Indiegogo

AngelList

And the list can go more…

I believe that encouraging such economical behavior in Europe, Middle East and North Africa can have a great impact on the economies of the countries of this region.

For that reason I decided to create a LinkedIn group called EMENASTART and here is why:

Who said that all tech startups should be based in the Silicon Valley? EMENA region has a rich base of skills and resources that can make it a great place for successful ideas to grow and become globally known.
The main obstacle is lack of collaboration and knowledge sharing. This Group tries to fill this gap by connecting people with great ideas together, offer advises to help people make their ideas go real and make investors pay attention to the huge technology trend that can change the region’s economy to the best.
Who should join this group?
Anyone who has a dream or a real idea that can be implemented to become a real business success in Europe, Middle East and North Africa Region. We focus on WEB 2.0 Mobile and cloud computing technologies but any other valued contributions to this group will be welcomed.

You can join/see the group by clicking here

 

References:

Market Watch Website: http://www.marketwatch.com

Forbes Magazine: http://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2012/04/10/technology-and-the-power-of-small-business-to-drive-innovation-and-jobs/