Why Product Management in the Middle East Needs Its Own Playbook

You can’t copy Silicon Valley’s roadmap and expect it to work in Riyadh. Or Dubai. Or anywhere in the Middle East, really. And yet, that’s what most product managers try to do. They read the same blogs, follow the same X (Twitter) accounts, and adopt the same tools and frameworks that are built for Western markets. Then they wonder why things break. I’ve seen this first-hand: brilliant PMs frustrated by slow decision-making, features no one uses, and user behaviors that don’t fit the playbook. It’s not because they’re doing product management wrong. It’s because they’re applying the wrong rules to the wrong game.So let’s talk about what’s different here. What makes product management in the Middle East unique. And why understanding that difference is your biggest edge.

The Western Playbook Is Built on Assumptions

Most of the product advice you’ll find online is based on a few core assumptions:

• Users give feedback easily
• Teams ship fast and iterate
• Data is available and reliable
• Stakeholders trust the process
• Customers are used to digital-first experiences

Now compare that to what a typical product manager faces in the Middle East:

• Users prefer to call or WhatsApp instead of using your feedback form
• Stakeholders want to review every screen before launch
• Data pipelines are incomplete or inconsistent
• Decisions are often top-down
• Cash on delivery is still thing, believe it or not

The frameworks aren't the problem. The context is.

Take something like “product discovery.” In the West, this means interviewing users, running tests, and building quick prototypes to validate assumptions. Here, it often means lobbying for approval from department heads, navigating political landmines, and convincing stakeholders that a problem is worth solving in the first place.

If you don’t recognize this, you’ll keep hitting walls. Not because you're a bad PM, but because you’re using tools built for a different battlefield.

Users Behave Differently Here

User behavior in MENA markets doesn’t follow global patterns. And that matters — a lot.

For example, Arabic-speaking users often prefer browsing right-to-left. If your app doesn’t support that properly, it feels foreign, even broken. Many users don’t trust online payments and would rather pay cash when the product is in their hands. WhatsApp is the main channel for communication, not email.

Even the concept of “friction” is different. In Western markets, you’re taught to eliminate every extra step in a flow. Here, sometimes those steps signal trust. People want confirmation calls. They want to double-check details before committing.

Understanding these nuances helps you design products that fit, not just function.

Organizations Are Structured Differently

Let’s talk about internal culture.

A lot of companies in the Middle East are still founder-led or family-run. That creates some unique dynamics. Influence isn’t always based on title. Decision-makers may not be in your standups — they may be your CEO’s cousin, or the founder’s father-in-law.

This isn’t a criticism. It’s just reality. And if you ignore it, you’ll struggle.

Top-down decision-making means you need to spend more time aligning upfront. You can’t assume autonomy. You have to earn it by building trust, presenting clearly, and looping stakeholders in early.

And unlike product-led cultures where teams experiment freely, many Middle Eastern companies still operate in a risk-averse environment. Failure isn’t celebrated. It’s penalized. So you need to create psychological safety before you can even start testing new ideas.

Why Blindly Copying the West Backfires

I’ve seen this go wrong too many times.

A PM brings in a new prioritization framework. Maybe it’s RICE. Maybe it’s a weighted scoring model. It makes total sense...in theory. But the team doesn’t trust the scoring. The leadership doesn’t buy into the process. And suddenly the PM looks like they’re hiding behind a documents instead of solving real problems.

Or a product team sets up a self-serve analytics stack, inspired by what they saw on X (Twitter). But the data isn’t clean. The product doesn’t have enough users. And no one knows how to interpret the metrics anyway.

These things work in mature, data-rich, product-led environments. But in the Middle East, the playbook has to flex. It has to adapt to the constraints and realities on the ground.

What the Middle East Needs Is a Modified Playbook

So what should the playbook look like?

Start with ruthless clarity. You’re not trying to copy the West. You’re trying to build products that work here. That means:

• Investing in context: Talk to users. Watch how they use your product. Understand their motivations. Translate more than just language — translate intent.
• Prioritizing influence over process: Build trust with stakeholders. Pre-sell your ideas before the meeting. Get buy-in informally before you ask for approval formally.
• Simplifying frameworks: Use RICE or OKRs if they help, but don’t worship them. Make them work for your org, not the other way around.
• Designing for bilingual, mobile-first users: Arabic isn’t just a translation challenge. It’s a design, UX, and trust challenge. Solve for that.
• Respecting the maturity curve: Your company may not be ready for cross-functional squads or product trios. Start small. Prove value. Earn scale.

This isn’t lowering the bar. It’s raising your situational awareness.

You’re Early — That’s a Good Thing

Here’s the upside: the product community in the Middle East is still growing. That means there’s room for leaders. If you understand the market, work within the culture, and still push for smart, user-centered decisions, you’ll stand out.

And you’ll build products that actually ship. That actually get used. That actually make money.

That’s the goal, right?