Top ten blog posts in 2013 (6-10)

As I mentioned in my "Lessons” of blogging post in May (you can read here, readers seem to like lists. As the final days of 2013 countdown I thought it might be interesting – for me as much as for you – to countdown the top ten blog posts of the year as rated by number of views. (I know this places a bias on posts published at the beginning of the year, but hey, the world of lists is full of biases!)

Number 10:

There are three article snapshot posts that made it in the top 10. Coming in at number 10 with 136 views is the post Article Snapshot: Business Opportunities in the UAE. The post provided an excerpt of an article I wrote for a newly launched online magazine in Canada – Canadian Business Strategist Magazine. It outlined the many untapped opportunities available to Canadian companies (or really any company) in health care, adventure and eco-tourism, metals, convenience stores, fashion and food and beverage.

Number 9:

The ninth most read blog post at 145 views was Male Youth Entrepreneurship in the UAE: a Research Project. The project was to study the motivators and deterrents of young men to become entrepreneurs and also looked at the lessons learned from two Emirati entrepreneurs interviewed by Yousef Al Shehhi. Yousef (now graduated) did a great job and he presented his findings at the MIT-Masdar Institute Forum on Entrepreneurship and Innovation  to great interest by researchers and the general public. 

Yousef and his poster 

Number 8:

Looking back at the numbers I was kind of surprised at number 8... The post Joining the Conversation: How to get our voices heard from the Middle East (2/2), with 149 views, is all about research and becoming a bigger part of the global management research community. As we approach the deadline for 2014 Academy of Management submissions I hope there will be more submissions from the Middle East in 2014 than 2013... I know many in the group photo below are working towards that goal!

Caucus participants AOM 2013

Number 7:

The second article snapshot is an article wrote in collaboration with researchers in Tunisia and Yemen. At 165 views, Entrepreneurs and their networks in MENA: an article and project using big data (and policy recommendations too!) was the results of a much larger grant project supported by the IRDC involving 14 MENA countries looking at the networks used by entrepreneurs. (I wrote about the five day workshop we had in 2012 starting in daily blog posts - day 1 here). Taha, Lotfi and I found that there was significant difference between entrepreneurs at various stages of venture development for network size and network diversity and that entrepreneurs with larger networks (number of advisers and more diverse (from different environments, e.g. private, work, professional advisers are more likely to launch their business in a short time. However, most entrepreneurs in the region have shallow and narrow networks... which leads us to our policy recommendations... 

The number of networks used by entrepreneurs in the MENA region

Number 6:

The third article snapshot - in a way a culmination of a project begun in August 2010 in the very room I am currently working in in Lorraine, Quebec - had 178 views. Article snapshot: “Technological innovation in the United Arab Emirates: process and challenges” is about the innovation process of an Emirati inventor and entrepreneur - Mariam Al Hallami, the first author, found that while the process used by the entrepreneur in the UAE is similar to that of entrepreneurs in the West, the lack of Industrial Research Centers puts a hamper scaling up inventions and innovations.

R&D expenditure - the MENA region needs to step up spending!

So that was 10 through 6... the top 5 will follow shortly....