London, Dubai share entrepreneurial flair

London can be a strange place to be in summer. Tourists teem and tempers fray on the tube.

Wimbledon's on and, with it, delayed April showers. A whole generation of youngsters escape west to Glastonbury (and another, older one, to Ascot). Life in Dubai — where expat living now comes with a heady dose of reality attached — is positively refreshing. But, like London and New York, London and Dubai have something rich, powerful and exotic in common: the entrepreneurial flair of the people they share.

Recently, I discovered that the British Business Group in Dubai is approaching its 25th birthday, a fact that shouldn't surprise anyone who knows about our rich heritage of trading links. Today, it's a highly switched-on networking organisation; a platform for trade, growth and optimism. And what it stands for: bringing people together and realising opportunity, is as admirable as it is productive.

Swapping colonialism

The facts speak for themselves. Today, well over 1,700 British companies are registered in Dubai. And many more are managed or staffed by Brits, who make up the single biggest expatriate UK community anywhere in the region.

In fact, even if you look back five years or so, over half of UK exports to the GCC came to the UAE — and 80 per cent of those came to Dubai. Forty years after swapping colonialism for partnership, we're still in business together. And Dubai has been identified as one of the UK's Top Ten markets for export-led growth. So far, so good.

So what do we Brits have to offer? And why are we still such a potent resource for the Dubai economy? For a start there's history on our side. Decades of work, post-handover in developing institutions and shaping best practice have helped grow trust. In all manner of areas, British heritage — if not British influence — has been prevalent over the years. But it's tempting to make too much of this legacy.

Aside from the fact that Dubai has worked for decades to single-handedly position itself as a global air transit hub, making the London-Dubai route a key air corridor, today the benefits of British presence are infinitely more on-the-ground... and human.

Brits here love the entrepreneurial climate, the comparative lack of regulatory red tape and the freedom that comes with big thinking and big ideas.

In 2011, you'll find us hard at work in every aspect of Dubai's commercial heart — from civil engineering to finance, medicine, media, telecoms, ports and far beyond. And on the high-street, at brands from Bentley and Waitrose to Lloyds TSB. In my own sector, marketing and advertising, British agencies and creative talent make an unmistakable contribution to the market, helping define its leading brands and shape their messages.

The writer is the CEO of Rufus Leonard, a brand and digital agency based in London and Dubai.