86% of Companies in the Middle East Are Adopting Reinvention Strategies

Accenture has released a new report titled “Building Tomorrow’s Economies - How generative AI will reinvent business in the Middle East.” The report shows that 86% of companies in the Middle East now have a clear reinvention strategy, and 82% have accelerated their efforts in this direction over the past year. Despite this strong momentum, only 9% have succeeded in implementing their strategies at scale. The report calls for moving beyond incremental digital improvements toward integrated innovation models that can keep pace with rapid global economic shifts and enhance competitiveness.

The report also analyzes the impact of generative AI on businesses in the Middle East, highlighting a clear surge in technology adoption alongside challenges that may determine which organizations lead and which fall behind in the digital transformation race. According to the findings, 76% of business leaders in the region believe that generative AI can increase individual productivity by more than 10% over the next three years. In Saudi Arabia, the report shows that 38% of total working hours are in scope for automation or augmentation through AI technologies, opening the door to unprecedented reinvention opportunities for companies.

The report classifies companies in the Middle East based on their readiness to innovate through advanced digital architectures into three main categories:

> Innovators – 9% (companies implementing a comprehensive, integrated reinvention strategy);

> Transformers – 77% (companies that have already embarked on the transformation journey, slightly below the global average of 81%);

> Optimizers – 14% (companies that have not yet taken serious steps toward reinvention, slightly above the global average of 10%).

Key Themes in the “Building Tomorrow’s Economies - How generative AI will reinvent business in the Middle East” Report.

> Reinvention has become an urgent priority: 81% of executives in the Middle East expect to radically reinvent their IT systems within the next three years. Meanwhile, 48% believe that accumulated technical debt negatively impacts competitiveness, and 44% consider technical debt an obstacle to executing reinvention strategies. Additionally, 52% of executives stated that sustainability has now become one of the main drivers of reinvention in their organizations.

> Tech giants are leading the charge: Global technology leaders such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services signed major strategic deals in countries including the UAE and Saudi Arabia, enabling these nations to outpace many others. This year witnessed several high-value deals in AI and advanced technologies, including:

> The establishment of HUMAIN in Saudi Arabia by the Public Investment Fund, which will encompass AI services, data centers, cloud infrastructure, and an advanced Arabic language model.

> In the UAE, the announcement of a joint UAE–USA Artificial Intelligence Campus spanning more than 10 miles in Abu Dhabi. This project, the largest of its kind globally, aims to enhance knowledge and business exchange and accelerate global AI technology development.

> The readiness gap for adopting generative AI: 66% of innovators view generative AI as a growth driver, while 34% focus on cost efficiency. Companies in the “transformer” category are evenly split between revenue and cost priorities. In contrast, 76% of optimizers view generative AI primarily as a cost-reduction tool, signaling a short-term mindset that may limit its overall value.

> Investing for impact: Since 2019, innovators have achieved a 15% increase in revenue growth and a 6% increase in profit growth, and they are twice as likely as transformers to track the return on investment of generative AI investments and reprioritize accordingly. Innovators are also 1.2 times more likely than transformers to consider significant changes to their business models to maximize value from generative AI.

> Imperatives of reinvention using generative AI: The report identifies five key imperatives for reinvention using generative AI: Lead with value; Understand and develop and AI-enabled secure digital core; Reinvent talent and ways of working; Close the gap on responsible AI; and Drive continuous reinvention.

Ramez Shehadi, Accenture’s Head of Strategy & Consulting for the Middle East and Africa and Global Head of Public Sector Strategy, and one of the report’s principal authors said: “The Middle East does not lack ambition or the right infrastructure for artificial intelligence; but very few organizations (less than 9%, in fact) translate this into enterprise-level reinvention. The real gap today is not between countries, but between companies that scale rapidly and those that merely think about it.”

About the Report

The report is based on Accenture’s Reinvention Survey, which included 300 senior business executives in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates across 19 sectors, all from companies with annual revenues of USD 500 million or more. It also draws on Accenture’s Pulse of Change Index, which measures the rate of change across six major factors impacting businesses: technology, talent, economics, geopolitics, climate, consumers, and society.