Good evening everyone.
It's such a pleasure to be here. And it's
a pleasure to be here especially talking
about connecting the dots and I don't have
a whole lot of dots that I want to talk
about and I'm not actually going to talk
about myself. Except I will start out with
there are two days of the year when we
actually stop and reflect on the past and
the future. That usually happens on
new year's day. We think about what
happened in the year passed and we look
to the future. The second day we do that
is on one's birthday. We think what
happened this year, what am I going to
plan for the future.
And I actually had a birthday on Monday,
so I was able to do this and have this
reflection just very recently. For me
it was a special birthday because it brought
my past together with my future.
My past has always been preparing to
write a book and I've always been passionate
about writing. I've been passionate about
storytelling but not really sure what are
the stories that I'm going to tell.
For the past 10 years I've been involved
with global entrepreneurship. Both social
entrepreneurship and global entrepreneurs
around the world and I've been working
towards writing a book about the men and
women I've been meeting, who are starting
innovative companies around the world.
I, in June, got a book deal where I'm
actually now deciding about to go in
and write about this. So, marrying my future
in to this and so for the next year by
the time my next birthday rolls around,
I had better have finished that book.
As I'm doing and planning this one of
the agonizing things that I learnt about
the book proposal writing process has been
that you have to plan all of these things out.
Who you are going to write about, what
points you're going to make.
In that process I learnt a number of very
valuable things that I want to share with
you and there are 3 key points.
So, the title of my book is called
'Steve Jobs lives in Pakistan'
and its the story about how global
entrepreneurship has arrived. When we
talk about entrepreneurship in U.S, we
think people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates
and we think of the big companies like
Facebook, Google, Intel and HP. But when
we think of entrepreneurship outside U.S.
I think everybody has it's image of women
on a dusty roadside selling Chachkies.
(Laughs)
And I just don't find that to be true.
Here in Turkey, in India and in Pakistan
I have found really compelling, globally
minded individuals who are leading competitive
companies. I chose the title 'Steve Jobs
Lives in Pakistan' as the indication of
the level of who these individuals are
on par with.
In preparation for that I read
the Steve Jobs book that recently came out.
It occured to me, this is my point
number 1, about the entrepreneurs and
the qualities that they have is 'Be kind'.
which was the one take-away I took from
Steve Jobs's book.
As I talk to these entrepreneurs especially
in places like Turkey, like Kenya,
Sierra Leone or Nicaragua,
where I've talked to the entrepreneurs 
I'll be profiling
for my book, the one thing that I see them
do is they're consistently kind. Not only
to their customers but to their staff.
But that's just very cliche to say 'Be kind'.
What I actually figured out what makes them
distinctive and distinguishes them is that
they are not cafeteria kind. What I mean
by that is, I do this myself, we all meet
someone and we say; 'I really like her a lot,
she is very accomplished but I don't like
the fact that she doesn't like to speak up
that much.' We pick and choose the things
we like about a person and then for some
reason we have this compelling need to
actually be little or criticize some aspect
of their personality or their being.
The reality is none of us are perfect and
no individual is going to be perfect.
And the one quality that I have found in
the entrepreneurs that I am looking at is;
They are not cafeteria kind.
They are unequivocally kind.
They don't qualify what they say about
inidividuals. I actually find that to be
something I'm going to be integrating into
my life more and more. Because that
actually leads into point number 2.
Being unequivocally kind helps when,
my point number two is;
You have learn how to say 'No'.
That is another key aspect
that I found in the individuals that I've
been coming across and interestingly
enough when I was looking in my horoscope,
it said that 'No is a complete sentence.'
And that's very important and I think it's
a very important in cultures outside U.S
too. I definitely find that here in Turkey
people are afraid to say 'No'. You come to
meet people and then you say 'Yes, I will meet you'
or 'Yes I will help you with this'
or 'Yes I can do that for you'
and yet for some reason those things can't
happen. That's just not in Turkey,
it happens everywhere I go all over the
world. People have a hard time saying 'No'.
They feel like they're going to lose face,
or they're going to be insulting you and
they are not going to be kind to you.
The fact is, when you actually say 'Yes'
to someone when you're supposed to say 'No',
you are creating a bigger problem.
Not only for yourself or for that other
individual but for society as a whole.
Because what you're doing is eroding trust.
Because if you are not caring through on
that yes and on that promise that you are
making, then that trust has been broken.
And it becomes the lowest common
denominator in any type of society.
Because it has the domino effect of
' Well, I can't trust anyone here.'
Trust is actually the fundamental thing
that any country needs to be a really
qualified entrepreneur. Everybody talks
about capital being the greatest challenge
of an entrepreneur. I disagree with that!
If you look at the U.S., the one
distinguishing thing that has allowed
entrepreneurs to thrive in U.S. has been
'trust'. We operate in a system of trust
and it really reflects in that society.
Point number 3, in that trust in learning
about people is also trouble. And this is
actually a key element in all the entrepreneurs
that I've been meeting around the world is
that they are people who are curious.
They get out and they have different types
of experiences and perspectives.
They ask different questions,
they interact and they collect ideas from
around the world. The entrepreneur that
I am profiling here in Turkey is
the gentleman who runs the company Airties
who makes the wireless routers. He was
an expat who went to U.S. and then
lived in Hongkong and one of the reasons
he was compelled to come back to Turkey
was because of all these international
experiences that he has had and collected.
He is able to take all of that intelligence
that he's had and bring it back here and
replicate that in Turkey. In doing that
he is also transferring those talents and
skills to the young people that are
working in his start-up right now.
I met a 16 years old young boy
who was speaking English in Lapseki,
at this restaurant all the way back
of the road. I was travelling with a bunch
of my American friends and this was just
on Monday. We stopped there for lunch on
our way to Bozcaada and he came over,
he was so excited to speak English.
We started to order and I said something
to the waiter in Turkish. The boss guy
says to the kid 'Don't talk,' like 'they
have a Turkish speaker,you shouldn't
be doing that.' and I turned around and
said 'No, he actually should be doing that
because he wants to learn how to speak
English.' We started to talk to him and I
said 'That's the only way he is going to
learn, why not you let him speak?'
We got talking to him and I found a lot
about him, he grew up in Lapseki,
his family are peach farmers and he was
able to get a job working at this restaurant.
He picked up English through the tourist
that are coming through and on television.
It occured to me that this kid, regardless
of what he becomes, embodies what all
of us should be doing is interacting with
different people and trying to learn from
them and their different experiences.
Because when you look at all the great
companies including Apple,
when you look at how Steve Jobs
actually built his company, it wasn't just
American ideas. His designs were taken
from Germany. The way he's packaging and his
presentations were taken from Japan.
The man travelled around the world and
picked up ideas from different people as
he did the talent that has made Apple
the top company around the world.
Actually travel is the one reason I'm standing
before you today in Istanbul because
it has been my curiousity to go out
in the world and meet different people
and try to explore and find those stories
that allow me to actually be a storyteller.
Thank you for letting me share mine at this event.
