Afrasiyab sent us this entry yesterday . We applogize for putting it up late . Sorry guys for such a long blog but believe me its worth your time !! My thoughts on the 3rd LCL Entrepreneurship Conference 2014 This week has been truly hectic and I have been involved with a multitude of tasks. Luckily Ive been able to accomplish all of them. So cheers to me on that :D.Though I have to seriously deal with my time management issues along with my tendency to get involved in dozens of things at once. More on that some other time. Fast forward to date .its Saturday the 15th , a shiny November morning in the capital. The stage is set at Jinnah convention center for The 3rd LCL Entrepreneurship Conference and everybody is talking about creativity innovation and craze (which happens to be my hook to idea). Ideas are excellent and potential is great while hardwork needs a special mention here but the craze is a crtical term for people who particularly are worrying about their midterm next monday or their FYP’s here. As long as EVERYBODY IS SITTING IN THE HALL, everything seems legit, people are discussing ideas and they ought to be. Even I am picturing a whole R&D firm right in the amidst of Islamabad. But As soon as the first person starts to walk out of this hall, the fever is gone. I have to get back home, do my assignments, put up a fancy status on facebook and some pretty blunt selfies (or stupid would define a better feeling for that) abd sleep.Add one more day and even the recent R&D firm of mine is gone from the farthest reaches of my mind. The problem is that these are fancy words in fancy halls for people in FANCY SUITES:D unless this idea reaches the lower classes of the society its not bringing up any fruits. I can bet 90% people sitting here including me are wondering when will their certificates of participation arrive. To hell with entrepreneurship we need to have a fancy lunch and some clapping and good time here listening to fierce speeches by Wahaj Siraj and Dr Mukhtar Ahmad.It’s not a problem at our end, it’s the problem on the system and cultural end.Let me first take on the systems end. But before coming to that Kamran Ali Rizvi deserves a special mention here . For those of you who do not know who he is just take my word for him. He is a wizard at words.An artist who surely knows how to attract the crowd. A true orator.Now back to my point .It starts right from the beginning of our education , specifically school. In a typical class of 40 there are always two sorts of kids. The NERD and the ought to be Entrepreneur. The latter being more fierce to break open from the bounds of traditional education. Always making asking questions that seem stupid but are not stupid at all.These are the children to whom we refer to as “Terhe Dimagh k Bache”. As both of these species travel up the ladder , the one who’s always into books and academics bags all the prizes , distinctions and the crazies, always trying to get out of the box keep on receiving the same rotten reply “Beta ye apke course men nae ha“. After graduating from universities the cream goes to the best colleges in the world and the Craze (the whole population) already dishearted and broken tries to initiate something new. Since they do not have straight A’s to justify their eligibility for a lead post and neither do they have the courage to walk up to some venture capitalist, or a bank for getting a loan.The courage already crushed to pieces during the 16 or so years of their education. On the other hand the cultural aspect is even severe.Their self confidence that was already blown up when a fifth grader wanted to be a cartoonist. Or a 3rd grader little girl wanted to design dolls, or a 10th grader wanted to start a production house by sentences like “why are you always making cartoons on your copy instead of learning Pythagoras theorem? “, “Men to apni guriya ko doctor bnaungi”, “Pagal hu gae hu filmen bnao ge , drame dikhao ge , khandaan ko badnam karo ge ??”, and the infamous” Puttar kamaen ga nae te khaen ga kithun?? , naukri nae te chokri v nae labhne!! Keeping in view all that the “CRAZE” has gone through in the first 16 or so years of their life, how could we even expect entrepreneurs to come out of this lot?? exempting some special cases which I”ll be talking about in a while. For entrepreneurship , the first thing is to identify your passion. And thats where the problem is.Pappu is my favourite example in such matters . Pappu is one of the hundreds of idiots who still even don’t know “Why they are doing What they are doing” because he is also a part of this stalemated culture and system.He joined the pre engineering group solely because he had innumerable marks in matric. Untill senior years fall in college , he wasn’t aware of anything other than EE or ME. Now he wonders, if he had been aware of something called “Media Studies” or “Journalism” or even Innovation itself he had been standing somewhere very far from where he is standing right now. His only objective after matriculation was to secure admission at a college which happens to be among the most competitive colleges of the region. Biology was not an interest so engineering was an obvious choice. After intermediate he thought of swapping fields with Media , or Journalism , the psychological barrier of “Engineering karne ke himmat nae ha tu ab bhag raha ha “ again stopped him from even thinking of it. Icing on the cake!! he belongs to a lower middle class family and can’t dare to talk about studying media and afterwards starting a media house in a family where the sole pay of the only earner is merely enough to run the household in a decent manner. Engineering represents a constant salary package atleast which a new venture cant promise so Engineering it is. The passion of media is lost and then there is Pappus wife to support for and then come two twinkling babies “Pappu Junior and Pappu senior” and Pappu starts running in a circle as an employee to a larger vampire corporate sector sucking out all his creativity for a fixed pay at the end of the month. And even if at some point he has resources to start a venture he WON’T . The irony here being PAPPU as the same aspiring fifth grader who wanted to be a Cartoonist once.The very probability of an innovative idea coming to his mind is now 0.0000000000000000001% or even lesser. All of you have heard “DOODH ka jala Chaach bhe Phoonk Phoonk k peeta ha :p Such Pappus represent an entire generation of our age. While the exempted cases of ALI Moeen Nawazish , Arfa Kareem, Maryam Kasim(an inspiration for us all to learn from) and this guy Asad Mehmood from Okara who built Pakistans fifth most powerful telescope, represent only a minute fraction of the generally talented youth of pakistan. Though I highly appreciate their hardwork and struggle that got them into the public eye but still they are the lucky fews to have found their passions in their teens and furthermore were able to seize opportunities that exist for all but unknown to most of the said youth, shich is itself a huge problem. The remaining larger portion are either idiots like me who still dont know their passion or are the Pappus of our generation who knew their passion once but now probably are waiting for their salaries to arrive so that PAPPU Jr. can be admitted to school while PAPPU Sr. can have a new computer simultaneously wondering whether to purchase a new washing machine or an oven from the committee they are expecting this month :) And believe me my group beats the Pappus by numbers approaching Infinity :D The solution? Well the first and foremost thing is to stop telling our children what to do. Let them experience the world , let them move around , give them space to grow and freedom to make mistakes even blunders i would say. We just need to back them up on their blunders guiding them to rectify their errors. Let them think big and out of the box.Let them explore the world and RECREATE A New World out of it.A sincere effort to be made on the cultural and socieys end. Secondly the system needs to back up individuals (especially from the lower middle class)as they take risks in terms of financial aid for their families for a stipulated time period alongwith support in terms of capacity building and human resource management. Thirdly these conferences should be held REGULARLY at universities (the hub of entrepreneurs) so as to keep them motivated to keep struggling inspite of being rejected. In the words of Sir Winston Churchill “If you have an important point to make, dont try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack” that sums up my argument here Thats all for now. My tummys full , a certificate of participation and lots of exposure rests in my pocket. As Im exiting the convention center, I along with 99.9 % of other participants are getting back to our assignments , quizzes , classes , labs, projects , internals , vivas, presentations and attendence fevers!! Thanks to our AWESOME education system!!
Posted on: Sun, 16 Nov 2014 08:59:14 +0000
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