Pardee Center co-sponsors conference on entrepreneurship

The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future was one amongst a number of co-sponsors of a conference on entrepreneurship, with a special focus on developing countries held at Boston University on October 18, 2008.

The conference marked the 10th Anniversary of OPEN – The Organization of Pakistani Entrepreneurs of North America and was held on the future-oriented theme of highlighting the key challenge areas for entrepreneurship in developing countries in general and Pakistan in particular in the next 10 years.

The program of the all-day conference included panels on global health care, social entrepreneurship, and on less-traditional entrepreneurial paths. The conference also included a contest for start-up companies and two keynote addresses.

The keynotes were given by Prof. Kenneth Morse of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center and by Dr. Mehmood Khan, the Chief Scientific Officer of PepsiCo.

The “Entrepreneurial Idol” contest was moderated by Umair Khan, founder of ClickMarks, judged by Prof. Ken Morse of MIT, Zia Yusuf, Senior Vice President SAP, and Bilal Zuberi of General Catalyst Partners. Startups EdNets and Click Diagnostics were the winner and runner-up, respectively.

Imran Nasrullah, Chief Business Officer at Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, moderated the panel on Global Healthcare which included Una Ryan, a Research Professor at Boston Univeristy and CEO of Avant Immunotherapeutics, Jeff Elton, the COO of Novartis and Nasim Amin, Senior Vice President at Biogen.

The panel on social entrepreneurship was moderated by Prof. Adil Najam, Director Pardee Center at Boston University, and included Syed Babar Ali, founder of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and of the School of Science and Engineering at LUMS, Sarah Bird, CEO of SaafWater, and Seema Aziz founder and Chairperson of CARE, Pakistan.

A final panel, called “The Path Less Traveled” was moderated by Shahid Khan, Senior Partner at IBB Consulting, and featured Hollywood actor Faran Tahir, artist and film-maker Mumtaz Hussain, professional race car driver Nur Ali, and designer and artist Samina Quraeshi.

More pictures can be viewed here.