The institution has set up its Centre for Entrepreneurial Development (CED), in strategic partnership with the United States’ top entrepreneurship school, Babson College, to inspire potential students to think like an entrepreneur by providing them the opportunities to explore and experience a completely different way of running businesses.
Not a student? Don’t be disappointed as the centre will also focus on shorter and more intensive training programmes for small and medium entrepreneurs, first-time business ventures and women entrepreneurs.
The state-of-the-art centre has been established in collaboration with the Aman Foundation to promote entrepreneurship skills among the IBA students. The welfare foundation has given Rs1 billion to the IBA for the project while the educational institution has raised around Rs3 billion itself.
On Wednesday, the inauguration ceremony of the CED was held with Fadi Ghandour as the chief guest. A passionate social entrepreneur himself, Fadi Ghandour, is the founder and CEO of Aramex, one of the leading logistics companies in the Middle East and South Asian region.
Of around seven billion people of the world, only 1.8 billion have stable jobs, he said. Entrepreneurship, in this context, is not only a developing world’s concern but has become a global story. “We have to pay attention to jobs, ladies and gentlemen!” Ghandour said. “And in today’s world entrepreneurs are the creators of jobs.”
Prof Safwan Masri, vice-president of Columbia University’s Global Centres, was also present. The Columbia University has its global network of centres in eight cities across the world, creating opportunities in research, scholarship, and teaching. “We can hope that Karachi will soon have a global centre at IBA,” he said while speaking at the inauguration.
Given the economy of the country, it is high time for the IBA to come up with concrete initiatives, fostering new culture of entrepreneurship in Pakistan, said the director of the newly established entrepreneurial centre, Zafar Ahmed Siddiqui. “The centre focuses on enabling the next generation of entrepreneurs to translate their ideas into enterprises which will eventually create jobs in the country.”
The IBA has joined hands with eight educational institutions to work in promoting the study, research, training and culture of entrepreneurship.
Aman Foundation CEO Ahsan Jamil recalled that around four years ago, the foundation’s chairman, Arif Naqvi, had forwarded him a document prepared by the IBA dean and director, Dr Ishrat Hussain, comprising strategy for the institute to become one of the top business schools of the world.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 22nd, 2012.
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Wish IBA Dr Ishrat was the dean when I was in IBA. With so much happening, it seems this is the time to be in IBA!!!
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