I participated yesterday in the Economist Roundtable in Beirut. The theme was around “how Lebanon can reach its full potential” and mostly focused on the role of government. There were some impressive talks by various Ministers including Charbel Nahas, Gebran Bassil and Mohammad Safadi. My panel discussed how to foster and keep Lebanese talent in the country, obviously I vouched for innovation and entrepreneurship especially among the youth.
I won’t try to be comprehensive in this post on what I think governments should do in general to foster innovation and entrepreneurship but I would like instead to talk about their roles on what Joi Ito a great friend and mentor always talks about as a key factor to increase innovation: “lowering the cost of failure”.
