In March 2012, at SXSW, Rei Inamoto, then the chief creative officer for AKQA, shared a nugget of wisdom that has stayed with me since then: “To run an efficient team, you only need three people: a Hipster, a Hacker, and a Hustler.” This was perhaps the best summation of what startups need to make loads of … Read more
NERO – Nationalization and Economic Reforms Order (1st Jan 1972) On 1 January 1972, in a speech to the nation, Bhutto and the peoples party’s government promulgated the three-staged program, under “Nationalization and Economic Reforms Order (NERO)”, which nationalized all major metal industries, including iron and steel, heavy engineering, heavy electrical, petrochemicals, cement and public … Read more
For the last three days roughly, there has been a positive sentiment around a lot of foreign Ceo interest in Pakistan. I for one actually missed the news item initially but later saw variants on official FB Pages, Media outlet sites, TV and last but not lease a frenzy of “fwds, via Whatsapp”. Most interestingly … Read more
The real cost of Incubators and Accelerators and the boogymen who promise capital I love startups. I hate the startups that don’t do any thing and cant stop playing pretend. They are wasting every ones time, most importantly their own. But at no fault of their own, they don’t know any better. Day in and day out, … Read more
There are many beautiful things about Pakistan including the fact that we are the largest group of conspiracy theorists or, so lost for direction, that the national past time is an ongoing debate as to what will happen next. Tragically, when most should be worried about internal politics and its correlation to industrial, commercial and … Read more
(A follow up post to my earlier post on Pan AM 73) 29 Years and 10 months or 10896 Days after Pan AM 73 (Sept 5th 1986) was high jacked in Pakistan, roughly 3 decades later we still haven’t been able to recover from our loss. We can sum it all up in with these … Read more
I profess, I know nothing about Cricket and I am sure Tendulkar will say the same about running an enterprise, for arguments sake CNN. There is a crisis of professional leadership within the realms of Media enterprises in Pakistan. It is any thing but professional and not aligned with strategic growth objectives of the people … Read more
“Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.” ― Albert Camus, Notebooks 1935-1942 No one exemplifies this trait better than two brands who have seemingly taken the market by storm over night. It takes a lot to be an over night success. Both Meat One and Day Fresh have gotten the … Read more
Gap Inc was the formidable US clothing retailer that was always relevant and wildly popular. It literally came from no where and then grew to having Banana Republic on the high end of the spectrum and Old Navy on the lower end. But some where in the middle it lost its own brand identity and … Read more
KPIs(key performance indicators) in the broader context of the enterprise and in providing color to ones output are a great tool. Every major corporation around the globe has some form of KPIs, they have been around for centuries in one form or an other. The age old saying, “you can’t improve it, if you cant … Read more