Speed of learning, niche market focus, and interdisciplinary human capabilities will serve as the primary differentiators for businesses in the artificial intelligence era, according to a panel of experts at the 9th World Investment Forum recently held in Doha.
“Their first advantage is their ability to focus on a very specific niche, right, and provide a very small audience with a perfect product and a perfect experience,” Jonathan Greechan, co-founder and Chief Innovation officer at Founder Institute, said.
He explained that smaller enterprises hold distinct advantages over incumbents through their speed to learning and absence of corporate bureaucracy. “It’s the speed to learning, it’s the organisations and the founders that are dedicated to running quick cycles... constantly questioning what they’re doing,” Greechan added.
Professor Wen Jung Li, vice-president of Talent and International Strategy at City University of Hong Kong, pointed out that higher education must adapt by training interdisciplinary talent.
“So we have to train children or students who have to work in the industry, govern it, and also have investors together and define a problem from the beginning without wasting too much time,” Li said.
He emphasised that future market leaders require deep cross-cultural understanding and empathy alongside technical capabilities.
“And this is cross-cultural knowledge that we expect future councilmen to understand, not just managing a big company growing the number of people and so on,” Li noted.
Salal Hasan, founder and CEO of Ahya, explained that entrepreneurs operating in the sustainability and technology sectors must build solutions on strong first principles.
“I think you have to train your team on strong first principles, because the approach to problem solving cannot merely be based on just qualitative assessment of language or purely research,” Hasan said.
Hasan pointed out that climate tech ventures in the Middle East face unique challenges regarding localised compute infrastructure and regional data sets.
“So the underlying impact of your choices when you’re building has become extremely important, and founders need to be able to compute that into their business model very, very quickly,” he added.
Luca Bucken, executive director of Government Relations at 500 Global, noted that venture investors observe learning being concentrated into much shorter timeframes.
“And I believe the adaptability of both the founder—and, crucially, the team driving the startup’s growth—is essential. It’s not just about learning quickly; it’s about diversifying how we learn and adapting to what learning looks like in this new era,” Bucken said.
Hasan Haider, founder and managing partner at Plus VC, stated that the core qualities sought by early-stage investors have not shifted despite technological advancements.
“I’m still looking for a team with a bias toward execution—one that consistently gets things done,” Haider emphasised.
Haider explained that customer acquisition and generating early revenue remain the most decisive benchmarks for evaluating new ventures.
“AI can accelerate that process, but it can’t change your trajectory—from ‘no one wants this’ to ‘this is genuinely compelling,’” Haider noted.
