Doha, Qatar: Qatar is home to a higher innovation capability and a destination for the world’s best talent. The educational infrastructure, research programmes and business excellence are transforming the country into a knowledge-based economy.
Speaking at the Web Summit Qatar 2024, Sheikh Mansoor bin Khalifa Al Thani, Founder & Chairman, MBK Holding discussed what it means to invest in a talent economy with Dan Murphy, Middle East Anchor and Correspondent CNBC.
Sheikh Mansoor discussed talent is key to economic advancement and Qatar’s future. “Entrepreneurs are the game changers and value creators and they are our hope for a better planet,” he said.
Responding to a query regarding what is the biggest trend in deal making in Qatar and around the region, he said, “The money always will go for what it seems it’s going to make more profit and we see the trend globally – AI, technology trends everywhere and I can see a lot of successful deals happening recently.
Addressing the trends when it comes to funding in the region, the startups and the sectors that are attracting the most amount of capital, he said, “Talking about MBK, I believe in and I focus on people, quality talent and my decision is always based on entrepreneurs based on the team.”
Regarding building a talent economy and the skills that are going to be required in order to advance the development of the economy and around the region moving forward, Sheikh Mansoor pointed that there is a paradigm shift on the talent requirement of the future.
Most of the current skill sets will be involved and “I believe that we will have actually more opportunities against what everybody is talking about the threat of AI.
It’s really up to us how we will use it applying it but I see AI will give us more employment actually and it will train more people in a better way.
“With AI, you can really up skill someone with lower skill. So I think you are creating more opportunity in a different way. We just need to think about it differently. So the issue is us is not the AI. That’s where the talent economy kicks off and We need to change our perspective,” he added.
Sheikh Mansoor further said, “We need to be more into the human and we need to make everything around us to serve humanity. It’s not about achieving just a goal, we need to validate that. So talent economy is really where I think we should be seeing, the economy should go for a better, sustainable future. So the quality talent economy is by attracting the quality talent to foster and build your own ecosystem based on that will differentiate your future economy.”
Explained about o training and skills development, he said, “The real power of the quality, talent, economy lies on your ability to discover hidden talent. Innovating beyond innovation is the thing that we need to do with the quality talent for better, sustainable future, he added
