Large businesses, including those top ranking companies listed in magazines like Fortune, make up only 0.3pc of all organisations in the US, according to the USA Small Business Administration (SBA).

This means 99.7pc of the companies, most of which home based, are small businesses, family ventures or founded by freelancers.

The SBA defines a small business as having 500 or less employees. This is a strong indicator of the entrepreneurial thinking of a country’s citizens. In this background, one has to honestly consider the approach of an average Pakistani towards starting his or her own venture.

The average Pakistani entrepreneur is a 30-35 year old male with a higher secondary or two-year college degree and comes from a ‘middle to upper-class’ household, according to the research conducted by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), an organisation focusing on monitoring entrepreneurship trends throughout the world.

Educational institutions, domestic industry, and even parents, all have to play a role in changing the mindset of our youth if we want to see the likes of Warren Buffet… in Pakistan in the next couple of decades.

The GEM Adult Population Survey (APS) measures the level and nature of entrepreneurial activity. The findings of this survey can have major implications for shaping up Pakistan’s economic development policies.

According to this survey, most entrepreneurial activity in the country is necessity-driven; which means people only consider starting their own business when they are unable to find secure employment.

Another interesting factor that this survey measures is the ‘Total Early-stage Entrepreneurial Activity’ (TEEA): the percentage of 18- 64 year olds who are either nascent (start-up or fledgling) entrepreneurs or owners/managers of a new business.

The survey concludes that the TEEA rate for Pakistan (12pc) is higher than the average for both the Middle East and Africa region (8pc) and that of the Asia Pacific Region (10pc). But again, most of those involved in TEEA are involved in Necessary Driven Entrepreneurship.

The survey also opines that, when compared with Iran, China, Malaysia, and Singapore, Pakistanis have the second highest ‘perceived opportunity and capability’ after Iran. This means that most people between the age of 18 and 64 can clearly see opportunities of doing business around them and also think that they have what it takes to become their own boss.

Still, however, most entrepreneurial activity in the country is necessity driven. The author’s experience as a manager and teacher of an entrepreneurship education programme corroborates these findings.

Certificate courses in entrepreneurship that target applicants from diverse backgrounds without any age limit get most the registrations. These are mostly people around 35 years and older who start their own venture at the end of the programme with minimal instructor effort.

One of the reasons for this could be that at this age, people are financially and emotionally stable, have tried and tested job-oriented employment, and now find themselves motivated and capable of taking risks of starting their own businesses.

Contrary to this, technology entrepreneurship programmes, that specifically target engineering and science students along with some experienced technology professionals, require extra effort from the instructor to develop an entrepreneurial and business-oriented mindset.

This is, because, unfortunately, our universities are preparing students for industrial and corporate careers rather than becoming business leaders. Thus most people in Pakistan, who can perceive an opportunity, opt for business as the last option.

Educational institutions, domestic industry, and even parents, all have to play a role in changing the mindset of our youth if we want to see the likes of Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Ratan Tata, Steve Jobs, and Richard Branson in Pakistan in the next couple of decades.

The pitfall of consumerism and money worshiping, however, must be avoided and this inspiration has to be nurtured by the ethical Islamic values of doing business.

—The writer is an assistant professor at the Aman Centre for Entrepreneurial Development at IBA, Karachi

Published in Dawn, Economic & Business, February 27th, 2017