“A corporation is a living organism; it has to continue to shed its skin. Methods have to change. Focus has to change. Values have to change. The sum total of those changes is transformation”
- Andrew Grove, co-founder, Intel Corporation,

Perception is, and unfortunately so, often the key to reality. Lack of awareness or understanding about a subject can lead to situations where snap judgements are made. Take Renaissance Services, our cover story this issue. One lucrative contract won few years ago, big in terms of contribution to both revenue and profits at the time, gave rise to widespread belief that this was all that the company was about. The admittedly complex holding company structure baffled the common investor and it was difficult to fathom the bigger picture.

That is exactly what we hope to accomplish with our story on Renaissance: demystify the structure of operations of the mammoth multinational, and give readers a glimpse of the vision and strategic focus that is driving it towards cornering a significant share of the oil and gas services space.

Analysis of the insurance market with 16 players (all for a population of about 2.6mn) shows that there is potential for serious growth in the near future as awareness builds across the nation. We explore the agricultural sector, where the news is not all bad, though the sector’s contribution to the sultanate’s GDP is a mere 2.6 per cent. The good news is that both the private sector and the government fully appreciate that a lot of work needs to be done and the latter is already chalking out a multi-pronged plan to make agriculture more competitive.

Mohana Prabhakar
Managing editor