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Delighted to share that our article, “International Scaling of Social Innovations Through Digitalization: A 3D Framework,” is now published in International Business Review. Celebrating the journey with my co-authors Tanvi Kothari and Dr. Sadaf Khurshid, and the amazing Editors (thanks Omar AL-Tabbaa Rob van Tulder Rudolf R. Sinkovics and Prof. Joseph Amankwah-Amoah, FAcSS, Roger Strange Fang Lee Cooke) and our anonymous reviewers. When a social innovation crosses borders, wh

I set the bar high for you. It would have been easier to set it low. But you are inheriting a world of profound change, and you will be among those called upon to make it better. And you rose to the challenge. I am immensely proud of you. It was not easy. You did it anyway. I hope your education taught you more than new knowledge. I hope it helped you discover the superpower within yourselves to challenge what seems impossible and make the impossible possible. And you did not

[caution: AI has hallucinated on this image and the data] This post is not about an AI hacking another government's sensitive health data portal (enough people are talkign about it). It is about the email going unnoticed for five days since we have no human-in-the-loops behind generic emails or the call centers are answered by bots. Agile governments and companies need people (yes they are expensive but hey - you are supporting an economy when you hire people! I do not see AI

1. Sovereignty is bounded – by supply chains, by energy & water resources, cost, data and talent. NO COUNTRY HAS EVERYTHING despite what you think and to be part of the global economy – that is the price you pay. 2. Carbon Offsetting delays the problem – it does not solve the problem. A forest still did its work when you stop it being cutting down and new trees actually produce more carbon than they remove. Further – it does not address e-waste pollution which is a future pro

Here are some insights from our article,"The Scaling of Social Innovations in Africa and Beyond," which has been accepted by AIB Insights. The article explores a question that is becoming increasingly important worldwide: How do social innovations scale across borders while maintaining their social mission? Using the cases of M-PESA in Kenya and Kiva across Africa, we examine how social innovations grow internationally, not just by expanding geographically, but by increasing

On July 30 2026, Google Earth released a new feature using Nano Banana that allowed users to reimagine any place on Earth with a simple prompt. What was internally imagined for good to ... generate custom images to help you visualize history, create real estate plans and more," did not go exactly as planned in this time of messy geopolitics. Was there no organizational memory of how things could go wrong? In 2010, Google mistakenly changed the borders of a digital map (Google

I found this a very interersting example of a ToR consent form. I am not sure which position I switch to means I consent. This type of ambiguity is worrisome and begs the question - whose responsibility? I am also attaching a simple typology of data acquisition strategies used by technology firms and their users. Which one do you think the above example belongs to?

AI systems can move across common regulatory boundaries. For example, from research to defense (the EU AI Act does not apply to these two sectors). Experimentation in research can lead to real-life ethical questions. An interesting case is SWARM biotactics, a startup founded in 2024. It programs living organisms and makes them cyborgs—for example, your common bug. I am not sure what agency the insect has. Here there is a deliberate trade-off – safety for low-life form agenc

AI literacy is about understanding AI – what AI is and is not. What AI can and cannot do and what it should and should not do. 1. Perception of AI History: There is a perception that the AI age began three years ago with ChatGPT. This is not true, but during the pandemic, there was rapid onboarding of the technology by governments, the sector, and individuals. 2. Metaphors not accurate: AI is like electricity or like a plane (It is NOT). Electricity does not steal your copyr

🥇 Values are a strange thing. Once upon a time, they were considered symbolic - of how an organization and a government chose to run its operations (a gentleman's handshake). Today, they have become a social media slogan - to be forgotten and dismissed when inconvenient. I was thinking of this case study making the rounds about the AI customer chatbot Ingka Group, the largest IKEA franchisee, deployed. The company took the 8500 displaced workers and redeployed them to remote

The key message of the paper is that as AI systems become more autonomous, interconnected, and complex, the traditional oversight mechanism of "Human-in-the-Loop" (HITL) is becoming dangerously obsolete. Instead of providing genuine oversight, HITL is frequently exploited for "AI Ethics Washing"—a practice where organizations create a false illusion of human control to protect corporate stakeholders and unfairly shift accountability onto users when AI systems fail. Key Facts

Is peer review important? More AI researchers are posting on arXiv as advanced papers and forgetting to go through the peer review part. Some authors are submitting some version of their peer reviwed articles (like conference papers) through the system. arXiv is becoming an important part of reports. For example, in the The International AI Safety Report, 30% of the references in the Report (393/1366), 44% of Update 1 (73/168), 60% of Update 2 (100/175), are from arXiv, which

I had the pleasure to speak at the event “Growing in Unity” Harvard Business School Club of the GCC & Keystone, where H.E. Mohamed BinTaliah, UAE Assistant Minister of Cabinet Affairs, highlighted the UAE as a startup nation. At the heart of this agenda was people – because that is the founding leader's legacy. Dr. Caroline Faraj, vice president of CNN Arabic, asked him about the AI journey, and he highlighted the painstaking process of validating Agentic AI with the human-in

If you are Harvard Business School Alum in the #UAE #GCC - this event organized by Saleh Lootah and Shibani Suri from the AI Institute is for you. Date: May 18, 2026 Time: 4:30 pm to 8:00 pm Venue: The House, Creek Golf and Yacht Club Dubai As the UAE sets the Agentic AI Government Transformation Agenda, hear from HE Mohamed BinTaliah Assistant Minister of Cabinet Affairs for Government Experience Exchange Affairs and Chief of Government Services of the UAE Government (Keynot

🏆 I had the opportunity to write for the German Orient-Institute, focusing on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region 👉 While I have had the privilege of living in many countries - #India #USA, #Germany #Taipei - I have lived the longest in the #UAE ⭐ Building global trust and legitimacy is a long-term process requiring patience, agile diplomacy, and a unified societal effort ⭐ Examples highlighted were Sovereign Wealth Funds, infrastructure projects, such as airport

AI is reshaping what we mean by employment, and we are confusing livelihoods, jobs, and tasks (work), which is a mistake. Unemployment means we are unable to support ourselves and our families at a minimum standard of living that gives us access to health, education, security, shelter, and other necessities, as well as the social and cultural rights needed to develop our personalities. This shift has accelerated post-pandemic, driven by the rapid onboarding of AI and the indu

I have been looking at the systemic effects of crises for a long time. It was my PhD topic. Most crisis have spillovers we do not foresee. They can quickly become a polycrises like what we saw during the pandemic. During the pandemic, a health crisis quickly became an economic, educational, logistics, trade, travel, and food security crisis. 👉 This crisis spillover will affect not just multiple countries globally, but industries, global economy, and further weaken the socia

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) just realeased a report reiterating what I have been saying for a long time. Testing AI systems in alpha and beta modes is not equivalent to real-world deployment challenges. You must monitor and measure for governance post-deployment which is challenging given the scale and complexity of adoption! We often see mission drift beacuse of values and commercial interests conflicting, or contract subclauses (especially militar

Image was generated based on the paper by Google NotebookLM My colleagues and I recently wrote a book chapter titled "Early Warning Systems: Whispers in the Global Corridors" to help people understand the Middle East. If you are in the wrong corridor - you hear the wrong message. You need to be invited to the right rooms and this takes trust. Politics and power do not build trust - they manipulate people and agendas. Time, patience and actions build trust. But trust is so ten

We need a systems-level lens on responsibility. This is not a simple equation of benefits and risks but a deep understanding of what could go wrong despite guardrails and how tenuous these guardrails are. Some of you are following the Anthropic and DoD 'discussions". Guardrails are about the power of "other" stakeholders. LLMs are broke but raise huge funds so guess the power is with investors, not the LLM companies themselves. Tech companies notional earning raise and fal