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Most organisations still identify skills gaps by asking people what training they think they need. Rami Busbait, Head of Talent Management at Savvy Games Group, took a rather different route.

Rami has repositioned talent management as a strategic growth engine aligned to Saudi Vision 2030 - in a market where the Public Investment Fund's creation of over 100 new companies has drained talent from established industry and driven significant salary inflation. He replaced traditional survey-based Training Needs Analysis with a four-dimensional competency model spanning behavioural, leadership, digital and technical capability, now underpinning hiring, development, succession management and high-potential identification.

Building it meant reverse-engineering global executive education. Rami and his team analysed the executive programmes of leading business schools including Harvard, INSEAD, London Business School, Oxford and Cambridge, extracting 680 competencies before using AI to consolidate them to 280, then to 10, and finally to five core competencies approved by the executive leadership team.

That work is now live. Savvy University, launched in June 2026, maps individual assessment results directly to programmes at those institutions, giving leaders a clickable route from identified gap to relevant training, alongside a succession module that maps leadership levels and development requirements automatically. An AI-driven capability model prioritises learning investment according to business risk. Learning utilisation is up 225%, and 100% of executive successors completed tailored development plans in 2025.

Rami will also address the harder question underneath all of it: in a country where 65% of the population is under 35, and where AI is automating precisely the routine tasks that once built early-career judgement, how do organisations develop the wisdom that technical training alone cannot deliver? It's a question he's well placed to answer, having delivered over 5,000 hours of career coaching alongside launching the Savvy Academy, which brings an AI-enabled game development curriculum to 60 schools in partnership with six universities.

CHROs, CPOs and those leading skills, succession and workforce transformation should join for a practical account of what it takes to build a genuinely skills-based organisation.