THE MEDIUM IS THE MEDIUM...:

The Middle East's Other Boom: Entrepreneurship: Just as 1960s counterculture was responsible for the '80s high-tech explosion, the revolutionary wave sweeping the Middle East will trigger a boom in entrepreneurship—but this time the change will be measured in months, not decades. (John Kao, 3/06/11, Daily Beast)

Time will tell, but I believe these events have set the stage for an explosion of entrepreneurial energy in the Middle East, especially in the Internet and related tech sectors. I see the emergence of a new socially minded entrepreneur in this part of the world—one willing to challenge the status quo, speak out, eschew the trappings of establishment career paths for something new, and take risks. Little of this has been possible, except with difficulty, in most of the Middle East until now. When repressive forces—direct or subtle—guide the young in the direction of conformity, compliance and conservatism, entrepreneurship may be thwarted. But it doesn't die; it only sleeps.

Now we see a massive outpouring of self-organized social entrepreneurship and activism, using technology as the medium of exchange. What will follow almost inevitably, I believe, is a similar tidal wave of business entrepreneurship and innovation as those radicalized by recent events and exposed to the power of new technologies quickly find ways to adopt them in every niche of a newly fluid society. The freedom that is on everyone's mind in that part of the world is the freedom to be one's own person—and also the freedom to be entrepreneurial in challenging conventional wisdom and established ways of doing things.

...the message is Western culture.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 6, 2011 9:03 AM