Back in 2007, an untitled painting by Iraqi artist Dia Al Azzawi was sold at a Christie’s auction for 20,000 USD. Fast-forward nine years, and ‘Mawt (Your Wedding is Death)’ by the same artist, fetched a whopping 235,000 USD. That’s a significant and rapid rise in value by most accounts,…
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Business
Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai says it’s only a matter of time until we’ll all be liberated from our smartphones. His company is envisioning a future in which we interact with a far more advanced form of artificial intelligence. It didn’t take long for me to realise that I had reached…
They may be impatient and love selfies but Millennials are also the first generation in history to be worse off than their parents. Here are some exceptions to that rule. AYAH BDEIR Bdeir is a 33-year-old graduate of engineering from AUB who got a Master’s at MIT before founding…
Tadashi Yanai started out making fashion at knockdown prices. Then he saw a future in simple, quality clothing. Now the owner of Uniqlo wants to turn his retail company into something that matters. As he approaches an age others may consider retiring at, Tadashi Yanai, the most successful businessman in…
Sometimes there comes a story of someone overcoming adversity such as war, poverty, and displacement – to achieve beyond expectation. The story of Mark Haidar is one of those. In 2011, Mark Haidar and his business partner Scott Harper pooled their combined savings of just 50 USD to found Dialexa,…
CEO Sami Khoreibi sheds light on how solar power is taking over the grid. His company, Enviromena, is spearheading the way for this hot technology in the Middle East. The future is now, according to Sami Khoreibi, CEO of Abu Dhabi-based Enviromena. With a growing list of large-scale solar projects…
As Wikipedia – the free, open content digital encyclopaedia created through the collaborative effort of a community of online users – celebrates its 15th anniversary, its co-founder, Jimmy Wales, says his dream is that every single person on the planet has free access to knowledge. According to Jimmy Wales’s Wikipedia…
When it comes to Arab titans of business, we’re all familiar with the Ghosns, Slims and Hayeks of this world. I would assume you’re also aware of others like Lubna Olayan and Nemir Kirdar. You may even know that Steve Jobs is among our greats given that he was the…
Collaborating with such designers as Paul Smith, Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen, The Rug Company, spearheaded by Suzanne and Christopher Sharp, do not make modern rugs per se. Rather, they make beautifully handmade traditional ones that embrace a contemporary aesthetic. It isn’t every day that I get to interview a…
Philippe Jabre is not who you think he is. Born in 1960 in Beirut to an affluent family who owned the very successful Almaza brewery (88 per cent of which was later bought by Heineken), he grew up in Lebanon before the war forced him to continue his education in…