Saleh Alda

Gaza origin Barcelona base Europe in scope

I work across science, business, and politics. Not because they are fashionable categories, but because reality does not respect categories. I care about structure, power, evidence, and what survives contact with the real world.

Read More Selected Writing

I began in engineering, moved into nanotechnology, then into water and sustainable development, then into strategy and business. From the outside, that can look like movement. It is not. It is one long investigation carried through different fields: how systems hold together, how they fail, and what it takes to change them without lying about reality.

I grew up in Gaza. That fact does not need decoration. It shaped the way I read institutions, risk, power, and the cost of slogans detached from consequences.

I later moved to Europe, continued studying, built companies, and founded Notes for Innovation in Barcelona. The work sits at the intersection of EU funding, sustainability, innovation, and strategic judgment. It is not consultancy in the shallow sense. It is structured thinking applied to decisions that actually matter.

I write in the same way I work: carefully, directly, and without pretending that complexity disappears because language becomes smooth. I am interested in ideas, but only when they can survive pressure. Changing one’s mind in public is not weakness. Refusing to do so is often vanity dressed up as conviction.

PhD

Water and Sustainable Development

MBA

Business Administration

MSc

Nanotechnology

BSc

Civil Engineering

How I Think

Three principles. No performance.

I do not treat thought as branding. I treat it as a discipline.

Evidence first

Positions are cheap. Evidence is expensive. I do not begin with loyalty to a conclusion and then search for support. I begin with the structure of the problem and follow it where it leads.

Revision is part of seriousness

Anyone can sound certain. The harder task is to remain intellectually intact when new facts disturb an old position. Accuracy matters more than consistency.

Writing should clarify, not flatter

I am not interested in producing agreeable language for its own sake. Good writing does not merely sound refined. It reveals the shape of an idea and the pressure points inside it.

Writing

Selected essays and analysis

Strategy, geopolitics, sustainability, and the intellectual habits that sit beneath them.

Critical Essay · Strategy

The Corruption of the Interior: Intelligence as Utility

A reflection on what happens when thought is reduced to consumption, and when intelligence is treated less as a faculty to cultivate than as a service to purchase.

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Analysis · Geopolitics

Militarizing Water: Power, Scarcity, and the New Geopolitics of Thirst

Water is no longer a technical matter alone. It is increasingly an instrument of leverage, a site of control, and a political fact with military consequences.

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Work

Two ways to work together

Advisory work through Notes for Innovation, or direct conversations around writing, speaking, and ideas.

Consulting and Advisory

Notes for Innovation

For ventures and organisations dealing with European funding, innovation strategy, sustainability, and difficult decisions that require more than recycled business language.

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Speaking and Writing

Talks, essays, and serious conversation

On European innovation, sustainability, water geopolitics, development, and the ethics of clear thinking in confused times.

Get in Touch

Let’s speak seriously.

For advisory work, writing, speaking, or thoughtful collaboration, reach out through LinkedIn or email.

LinkedIn Email