Dubai's tech ecosystem isn't suffering from a talent shortage - it's suffering from misaligned hiring and leadership. M.G Hachem explores why product maturity is lagging and how to fix it.
At CABSAT 2025, the real insights weren't in the product demos but in how teams think, talk, and design under pressure. Here's what stood out.
As an introvert, I approached CABSAT like a reconnaissance mission, not a networking marathon. Here's the playbook I used to extract real signal from the noise.
Product strategy fails when teams ask what can we build instead of why build it at all. True strategy comes from incentives, positioning, and leverage, not just capabilities.
The next era of design won't be lost to a lack of talent, but to a lack of choice. As systems evolve, designers must choose to be architects, artisans, or risk irrelevance.
Real differentiation isn’t branding or vibes. It’s widening the gap between willingness to pay and cost to deliver — and building leverage, not ornamentation.
In unknown territory, comprehensive specs don’t reduce risk — they manufacture false certainty. Build small tests, document learning, and iterate with cheap context re-entry.
When products diverge from their original intent, the problem is often blamed on strategy. In reality, it’s usually coordination failure—accumulated micro-decisions without shared context.
Shipping fast does not guarantee strategic progress. Dubai product teams often miss quarterly goals when sprint output disconnects from the business outcome it was meant to move.