entrepreneurship, innovation, knowledge economy: three buzzwords akin to their neoliberal cousins privatization, liberalization, and growth. These words are a defining characteristic of the landscape of business relations and employment reform across the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries.1 They encompass the promise, made by international financial institutions (IFIs) and consultants alike, of resolving two of the region's major challenges: limited economic diversification and a major public wage bill. These three words are laden with objectives so difficult to attain, the region has been struggling to grapple with them since the rapid development of the 1970s. Concretely, the central concern is how can Gulf human capital transition from that which is inextricably connected to the state to that which is independent, innovative, and dynamic? Related to this and of central policy concern, how can entrepreneurship be operationalized to remedy the ills of the Gulf political economy? These worries were thrust to the forefront of the regional policy agenda as the unrest that characterized 2011 drove home the urgency of the concerns of the millennial generation in the Middle East.