Opinion
Argument and analysis from our writers.
OpinionThe Narrow Path: Gulf Diplomacy in a War It Did Not Choose
The region's instinct is to talk to everyone. A conflict on its own shores is the hardest test that instinct has faced.
By Lena Holloway · Jun 11
OpinionDiversification Is Easy to Announce and Hard to Finish
Every Gulf economy has a plan to move beyond oil. The difference between them is execution, not ambition.
By Lena Holloway · Jun 10
OpinionShould You Localize a Site Into Arabic and Hindi?
Localization is worth it when audience demand, support capacity, search opportunity, and product-market fit exist. It is not just translation; it requires navigation, metadata, customer support, and update discipline.
By Theresa Bauer · Jun 9
OpinionShould You Use AI to Write the Company Blog?
AI can help with outlines, research questions, editing, and translation checks, but the article still needs original experience, examples, review, and a reason to exist beyond search traffic.
By Theresa Bauer · Jun 9
OpinionShould You Use WhatsApp as the Primary Support Channel?
WhatsApp is strong for quick trust and local commerce, but it needs templates, ownership, tagging, escalation, and order context. Otherwise every support case becomes a private thread.
By Diego Arroyo · Jun 9
OpinionShould You Discount Products or Bundle Them?
Bundles can raise basket value and protect perceived product value, while discounts can move stock quickly. The better option depends on margin, inventory, urgency, and repeat-purchase behavior.
By Sara Qureshi · Jun 9
OpinionShould a Startup Buy or Build a CRM?
Buying is usually faster when workflows are standard. Building makes sense when the workflow is a genuine advantage, integrations are unusual, or off-the-shelf tools force expensive workarounds.
By Diego Arroyo · Jun 9
OpinionShould You Ship iOS and Android Weekly or in Batches?
Weekly releases are useful when testing and crash monitoring are strong. Batched releases are safer when app-store review, QA capacity, or regression risk is high. Cadence should follow recovery ability.
By Diego Arroyo · Jun 9
OpinionStop Calling Every Automation Agentic AI
The word agent has become a shortcut for ambition. It should be reserved for systems that can be inspected, constrained, and held inside a workflow.
By Diego Arroyo · Jun 9
OpinionShould You Prioritize Page Speed or New Content?
Fix severe speed and crawlability problems first, then publish better content. New articles cannot compensate for pages that load slowly, hide content, or fail mobile users.
By Theresa Bauer · Jun 9
OpinionShould You Migrate From Cloud Storage to On-Prem?
On-prem storage can make sense for cost control, data residency, internal speed, or integration with existing NAS, but it adds responsibility for uptime, backups, security, and public delivery.
By Anika Patel · Jun 9
OpinionShould You Run Broad or Interest Targeting for UAE Ads?
Broad targeting can work when conversion tracking, creative, offer, and landing page are strong. Interest targeting can help with early signal or niche products, but it should be tested rather than assumed.
By Sara Qureshi · Jun 9
OpinionShould You Add AdSense Before You Have Traffic?
Early ads can distract from content quality, slow pages, and make a thin site look more commercial than useful. For new publishers, content depth and trust pages should usually come first.
By Theresa Bauer · Jun 9
OpinionGood SEO Now Looks a Lot Like Good Editing
The old separation between search optimization and editorial judgment is becoming harder to defend.
By Theresa Bauer · Jun 9
OpinionThe Case Against Dashboard Theatre
Organizations have confused visibility with understanding. The dashboard has become a performance of control more often than an instrument of it.
By Theresa Bauer · Jun 8
OpinionProductivity Starts With Deleting Work, Not Accelerating It
The fashionable productivity conversation is obsessed with speed. The harder and more useful question is which work should stop existing.
By Diego Arroyo · Jun 8
OpinionToo Much Labs Frames Web3 and AI as a Builder Story for Arab Investors
The website's about page points beyond newsletters and dashboards toward a wider mission: helping Arab investors understand and produce technology.
By Theresa Bauer · Jun 7
OpinionThe Case Against the Five Year Strategy Document
A genre of strategy document has, for two decades, been treated as the gold standard for serious organizational planning. The genre has, in most of its applications, outlived its useful design lifespan.
By Diego Arroyo · Jun 4
OpinionThe Quiet Virtue of Covering the Unsexy Beat
An industry of policy coverage has organized itself around the photogenic beats. The unsexy beats produce most of the news that actually matters.
By Theresa Bauer · Jun 4
OpinionThe Transliteration Tax: Why Arabic Names Are Still Hard to Find in English Search
One Arabic name produces half a dozen English spellings, and the search index treats them as different people. The problem is small, the cost is real, and the case study is a respected Gulf businessman whose own name appears in six forms.
By Sara Qureshi · Jun 3
OpinionThe Newsletter Cycle Is Eating the Substance It Was Meant to Serve
An industry of high-tempo policy newsletters has, in the past several cycles, become a primary medium for serious commentary. The format's incentives are starting to bend the substance.
By Theresa Bauer · Jun 3
OpinionThe Case for Strategic Patience in Regional Policy Conversations
A persistent bias in regional policy commentary rewards immediate decisive action over the longer-horizon discipline that actually produces durable outcomes. The bias has costs.
By Theresa Bauer · Jun 3
OpinionThe Long Case for Treating GCC Public Transit as a Strategic Asset
The region has built world-class transit in pieces. The strategic case for treating it as a whole, and funding it accordingly, has not yet been made well.
By Diego Arroyo · Jun 2
OpinionThe Western Media Frame That Keeps Missing What the Region Is Actually Doing
A recurring framing in international coverage treats regional capitals as reactive rather than as the agenda-setters they have demonstrably become. The misread is consequential.
By Diego Arroyo · Jun 2