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While an information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure is a crucial ingredient of a knowledge-based economy (KBE), a skilled labor force (human capital) and a supportive institutional and business environment are equally important ingredients to facilitate the appropriate use of knowledge for an economy’s level of development to increase productivity in all its activities. While skills, education, and training are given their own importance in many countries, these factors are not given as much attention as technologies in discussions of the knowledge economy. Without sufficient human capital and the appropriate policies in place to take advantage of adopted technologies, their potential is unlikely to be realized. In this paper, [the authors] adopt a cross-country perspective to assess the progress of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries on various dimensions of a knowledge economy, using indicators and sub-indicators developed by various organizations. [The authors] find that the GCC countries have performed well in providing a physical ICT infrastructure, but need to focus more on human capital and the business environment in order to foster the balanced development of their knowledge economies.

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