The GCC's "Government Accelerators" - What the UK Got Wrong About Innovation
The UK invented the idea and then gave it away. The Gulf kept it inside government, where it works.
Over the past 18 months, I've been watching the UAE and Saudi Arabia launch dedicated "government accelerators" - essentially in-house consulting units that rapidly prototype policy changes before full implementation.
The UK tried something similar in 2010 with the "Behavioural Insights Team" (Nudge Unit). Brilliant concept, but it was spun out too quickly into a social enterprise, losing the direct pipeline to Number 10.
What the GCC is getting right
Embedding, not extracting. These units sit inside government, with direct access to decision-makers. No procurement delays, no consultant reports gathering dust.
Government innovation needs three things the UK gradually lost: proximity to power, permission to fail fast, and humility to steal good ideas from anywhere.
Speed over perfection. A 90-day prototype cycle vs the UK's typical 18-month policy development. When you can test a digital service or regulatory change in a contained environment, you learn faster.
Cross-border learning without ego. I've seen UAE teams openly studying Estonian digital government, Singaporean urban planning, and yes, UK devolution models (if you can believe it!) - then adapting ruthlessly to local context rather than copying wholesale.
The lesson isn't "GCC does it better." It's that government innovation needs three things the UK gradually lost: proximity to power, permission to fail fast, and humility to steal good ideas from anywhere.
Having worked closely at the top of Government departments in the UK, I can tell you how much they suffered by eroding those three musts - and others have learned from their continued mistakes.
For anyone working at the intersection of government and transformation, this is the playbook to watch.