STEP: What is the Saif Center of Innovation and what was your rationale behind establishing it?

Umar Saif: It is common in universities like MIT for professors to be involved in startups. Indeed, companies like Akamai, RSA, and 3Com were all started by MIT professors and have gone on to generate billions of dollars in annual revenues.

When I moved to Pakistan around five years ago, I found that, with some effort, I could carry on doing good research, but starting a high-tech venture seemed quite out of reach. Basically, there was no eco-system for a true startup: a small company focused on an innovative product or business model that makes many multiples of the initial investment. There was no VC money available, no clear exit route (acquisition or IPO), very weak corporate law with little provision for things like co-founder options or vesting schedule. Above all, even the best students from a university like LUMS were running after jobs from outsourcing joints, with no real potential for growth beyond a certain glass ceiling (the largest IT company in Pakistan is less than 300 people).

All of this became painfully clear to me when I started BumpIn.com in a small guest room in my house. It wasn’t exactly in the garage, but it was close enough (the guest room was directly above the garage!). We toiled, dreamed, and persevered for more than 2 years to be reminded over and over again how difficult it is to do a Silicon-valley style startup in Pakistan.

This eventually led to me to setup SCI. SCI is facility for startup incubation. It is big and well-provisioned (4 floors, 18,000 square feet of covered space, dedicated fiber-optic connection), but the biggest strength of SCI is its inhabitants. Everyone at SCI works for a single purpose: to create innovative products that can result in a $100 million company. My highest point of the day in SCI is when I see two entrepreneurs from different companies share their vision, technology insights, and dreams.

In a sense, SCI is not very different from incubator models like the Y-combinator or tech-stars, albeit we do not have the same level of funding, visibility, or access to lots of successful entrepreneurs as mentors.

STEP: SCI is an incubation center but also a “training center for technology entrepreneurs and enthusiasts” (statement from the SCI page). What kind of training does a technology entrepreneur in Pakistan need?

US: The training is mostly informal. What we share with each other on a BBQ on our rooftop is at times much more valuable than what 4 years at MIT taught me. I learn everyday from our budding stars. We hope to formalize more training programs going forward, e.g., business plan competitions, workshops on technologies, pitching.

For the activities, a startup is mostly an art, not as much as science. Our activities involve everything from discussing and refining business strategy, developing business plans, preparing sales pitches, raising funding, finalizing contracts, developing new tools, organizing PR campaigns etc.

STEP: Do you think that incubation centers can work in Pakistan in the long term?

US: Of course. They have worked in many countries. I was in Seoul a few years ago and was told that there are close to 300 incubators in Seoul alone. An incubator lowers the barrier for brilliant entrepreneurs to start a company. An incubator shares the risk, shares the highs and lows and mostly takes care of the mundane aspects of running an exciting tech venture. I hope more incubators will take root in Pakistan.

STEP: Have any startups ‘graduated’ from the center?

US: There are many levels of graduation. The first 3 startups — BumpIn.com, SMSall.pk and Seenreport.com — have all become profitable ventures and moved into bigger spaces with access to more resources and more room for expansion. We are looking forward to the time they outgrow the facilities at SCI and move into their own space.

I firmly believe that if we can churn out one success out of SCI, we will create a wave of brilliant students all wanting to do a startup. All we need is one success story – but its many times more difficult to come by in a country that no investor on Sand Hill Road is willing to touch with a 10 foot pole, and where electricity is available for only about half of a working day.

“If people in universities, who have the rare ability to convert research into products are not rewarded, and their careers are stifled, they will leave the country and go to the developed world where such abilities are very highly valued and rewarded. As a matter of fact this has already been happening for a number of years, and the country has suffered badly because of it.”

In our view, professors or students who have the ability to convert research into products are rarely, if ever, rewarded by universities anywhere in the world. Rather, it is the marketplace that rewards them: Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were college drop-outs who did not make their mark in the cocoon of a university fellowship program. Rather their ideas and innovation took off in the competitive environment of the open market.

Thus, while we agree that entrepreneurial individuals are sorely needed in the country to transfer the benefits of research and intellectual output at universities, we contend that it is not the mandate of the Higher Education to focus on incentivizing them directly.

HEC is not the panacea. It is one government agency, with limited clout and a shrinking budget. HEC’s focus must remain on allowing our universities to hire and retain the best and brightest researchers and educators that are available, and giving them the opportunity to reach their full potential. That in itself is a formidable task, and executing it well requires making difficult choices. HEC does need to “return to Pakistan” and focus on areas of research and inquiry that are more suitable for Pakistani researchers given our limited resources and our unique developmental needs. To this end, HEC can nudge researchers into areas that are most relevant to Pakistani context.

Government agencies and organizations, like the Ministry of Science and Technology and Pakistan Software Export Board, as well as public-private R&D funds, like the National ICT R&D Fund, need to play the leading role in commercializing research coming out of the universities. Organizations like the National ICT R&D Fund not only have the necessary funding base but their very structure as a public-private partnership makes them ideally suited to carry out this risky but essential purpose.

HoD Ahmad rightly points out that we need a sustained effort to invigorate the industrial base and subsequently create employment. Yet, it’s not the job of university professors; it will be an error to evaluate their worth from a task that is not theirs. Instead, alternative avenues should be provided to support people who have the “rare ability to convert research into products” to thrive and to do what they do best, while not distracting HEC from it core and vital purpose.

“The Campus Career Portal Initiative proposes an efficient, scalable, and distributed system of matching students, academia and industry to achieve industry-funded research projects and industry demand recruitment. It will also generate invaluable statistics, and effectively match graduates within their respective industries with pinpoint accuracy.”

Currently, 85 universities are involved in the project, including all the major business and engineering institutions like LUMS, IBA, GIKI and FAST. So it seems like the the government have taken note of the industry-academia gap and are taking positive steps to address the problem. So far so good.

But when you take a closer look at the project things start to look slightly less rosy. The first thing that struck me was the funding granted to this project. According to the National ICT R&D Fund’s website 12.19 million rupees were given to Naseeb Online Services (Pvt) Ltd (the parent company of ROZEE.PK) to carry out this initiative, which seems like a lot for basically developing an interactive website. These must be some awesome portals.

Which leads to the second disappointment. The portals seem to have little more than the content already available on ROZEE.PK. Looking at the NUST Portal, you’ll see a list of available vacancies which are the same as the ones shown on ROZEE.PK’s homepage and the same as the ones shown on other portals. No screening seems to be done at all. The rest of the page shows some logos of  “featured employers” which I can only assume are of companies who have hired from this institution before and a calendar. Other links include the Student, Alumni, and Employer Corners which again allow students to make profiles of themselves and employers to search through these profiles (something ROZEE.PK was already doing).

Although I appreciate the effort and recognize the need of industry-academia interaction, is this really the best way to go? Give 12.19 million rupees to a company to basically tweak its own website and put a University’s name at the top? The original proposal for the project lists the following academic objectives of the project:

(i) produce higher quality graduates who would have amassed practical training gained through industry internships advertised on their university’s portal,
(ii) better align faculty research with industry needs,
(iii) attract additional skilled graduates to join university faculty due to increased research funding from industry,
(iv) perform analytics to better identify education gaps and improvement areas.

Only the first objective seems relevant to the portals created, but since ROZEE.PK was performing this job anyway I don’t see how a portal is of any use. No mention of research is made on the portals I visited (except LUMS which has “Research Papers” link pointing to an empty page) and unless there are some special pages that are not visible to the general public, I don’t see how the industry and faculty are “aligning” through these portals (again only LUMS has a faculty corner). And with regards to the last point, wouldn’t it have been easier to just ask the participating universities and companies to email them these statistics?

In conclusion, while I think the idea is a good one, it does not justify the funding granted to it. Surely, the Ministry of Information Technology can look past the flashy websites and see that the project is not as revolutionizing as it claims to be. Or am I missing something?

There are many reasons for this increase in gap between the academic training and the industrial needs, but most of them can be traced directly to the lack of qualified faculty, especially those with industrial experience, at most of the institutions. This is particularly true for the IT-related disciplines.  Faculty forms the core of academia and other than classroom teaching is also responsible for i) course and curriculum development and keeping them up-to-date with the ever changing state of technology, ii) evaluating student performance, iii) career counseling,  iv) research and innovation, and last but not the least v) help develop a creative and positive learning environment. Thus the lack of qualified faculty affects all aspects of academic performance and is the largest contributor to the waning quality of graduates.

Recently, the Software Ponder Alliance has started an initiative in which some members of that group engage a small number of senior students from an institute and guide them throughput the process of a senior project. At the end of this annual exercise, the involved students were better equipped to deal with their job functions. This practice is now being expanded to cover more institutes and more students. The exercise showed how small and informal efforts on part of some individuals can significantly affect the entire system.

Recognizing the fact that the faculty cannot be improved overnight and that attracting qualified faculty to local institutes not only requires funds but also social and economic reforms, I propose the following measures to gradually improve the state of affairs:

· Curriculum and courses should periodically be revised based on the practices of some of the leading international universities.

· The faculty should be encouraged to make use of recorded lecture and content made available on the web by leading academics at top universities

· The faculty should be encouraged to liaise informally with professionals especially their former class-fellows now working in the industry. This liaison should focus on:

o Obtaining feedback about course assignments

o Having the professional over to deliver one or two of the scheduled class lectures

· To inculcate essential tool knowledge, workshops and seminars should be organized by leveraging the aforementioned informal industry liaison

· The academia should periodically host alumni in the industry to seek feedback on academic issues

· The faculty should use informal industry liaison to secure internship opportunities for the students as well as explore senior project ideas with the industry. The trouble with senior projects is that the industry is not in a position to dedicate manpower to the constant monitoring of the projects. A way out could be to have periodic one or two hour progress reporting sessions, on a rotating basis at the industry venue and the academic venue

· Engage active organizations such as Software Ponder Alliance, IEEE, INETA, Koshish Foundation, and STEP to leverage their platforms for mutual benefit.

Someone once told me that you should do what is right on your own. You have limited powers and your actions will only have effect in a small circle around you. But when others near you notice the goodness around you, they will contribute more area to your influence. As your circle of influence grows you will be able to extract more improvement in society out of your positive actions.

I believe that the steps outlined in this article can be put in place with some effort on part of both the parties involved. These steps do not require a lot of funding or formal involvements on either side and informal platforms such as the ones mentioned above can play an important role in implementing these. It is time for the faculty and the professionals to realize their moral duty to the society in general and contribute towards the improvement of the society in general and the academic sector in particular.

Editor’s note: Saqib Ilyas is a doctoral student of Computer Engineering at Lahore University of Management Sciences and an assistant professor at NED University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of STEP.