What excites Pakistani graduate students?

This past week I was in Lahore, Pakistan visiting LUMS, the country’s leading graduate business school. I had meetings with the superintendent and several professors before making a presentation to students on Acumen Fund’s work. Approximately 50 filled the auditorium, and no one left before the end of our 90-minute presentation and Q&A. I usually try to talk about why and how we do what we do, rather then talk about organizations. It was exciting to see how enthusiastic these 24- to 28-year-old Pakistanis were about the idea of investing in businesses whose customers are mostly poor. We fielded question after question about these resource-poor organizations and how Acumen Fund tries to help them: How do you keep the strategic plans simple? How capable are the managers, and how do you help them? How involved do you get in running companies? What do you do when there is a great idea but no leader? Are there good ideas in other countries that we should try in Pakistan?

What is most interesting to me personally is how similar these questions and conversations are with graduate students of the same age in the U.S., or those in India. They all get excited by how hard this work is and seem to really understand. Also, they seem interested in working with us because they are interested in the problems and our solutions, and are eager to do this in any country, not necessarily their own. The more ambitiously we set the goals, the better the reaction. It says a lot about this emerging generation of leaders.