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recent years. In 2014 the Central Bank supported a capital injection of over $400 million for the start-up economy, leading to the creation of funding and training opportunities. But all the money in Lebanon is not enough without business people passing on their know-how, contacts and self-confidence to others. According to Sahmarani, who worked at various startups before going freelance to consult on social entrepreneurship, she developed skills key for her career at LAU. “We were really exposed to different opportunities and different programs that not a lot of people know about,” she said. Since 2006, the university’s Department of Management Studies has offered a “Small Business Start-up Laboratory” course. “LAU was the first university in Lebanon to offer such a course,” said Silva Karkoulian, the department’s chair. Without proper training, “Lebanese young entrepreneurs were running businesses by trial and error.” Addressing this gap, the laboratory allows students to “acquire knowledge for creating new business ideas, seeking funds, meeting competition, leadership skills, benefiting from available technologies, and developing succession planning for family businesses,” added Karkoulian. In addition to the specialized curriculum offered by such courses, the initiative of individual professors who encourage a pro-active mindset is also crucial. “One of my instructors [at LAU] was the sort of person who would always push you to pursue new opportunities,” says Sahmarani. “For example, we were undergrads, but he pushed us to write a paper and submit it and present it in Dubai. He pushed us to pursue new topics and think outside the box.” While Mikati and Sahmarani are helping to create a new generation
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of Lebanese entrepreneurs, other LAU alumni are solving life and death problems with their start-up businesses. Ziad Sankari, who graduated from LAU with a B.E. in Computer Engineering in 2007, founded his startup CardioDiagnostics five years later, to produce GPS-enabled heart monitors. The innovation, which received personal praise from former U.S. President Barack Obama, allow medics to make more accurate diagnoses, and is today in use on patients in the U.S.A. and Gulf region. Although he graduated a decade ago, Sankari see his studies at LAU as key in shaping his success, both in terms of academic qualifications and personal development. “The education at LAU is outstanding, on par with international standards,” he said. “The use of the U.S. system prepared me for my graduate study,” added the entrepreneur, who went on to complete a master’s degree at Ohio State University. Adopting a “critical thinking” approach has been key to Sankari’s success. He believes that developing a pool of entrepreneurially-minded people is key if the sector in Lebanon is to succeed long-term. “We need to feed the fuel of the start-up revolution and that is through talent,” he explained. “We need to encourage a mindset of risk-taking, going outside the box and of critical thinking.” Initiatives and programs at LAU encourage students to follow in the footsteps of alumni like Mikati, Sahmarani and Sankari. This spring, LAU launched the Achieving Creative Entrepreneurship (ACE) Program, an initiative designed by the Outreach & Civic Engagement Unit (OCE) with Speed@BDD, a Beirut-based accelerator for start-up businesses. “ACE falls within OCE’s areas of interest in terms of providing students and alumni with leadership in entrepreneurship, as
we are living in a cognitive ecosystem that encourages creative initiation of useful and creative ideas,” said Elie Samia, assistant vice president for Outreach & Civil Engagement. “Universities are often ranked as to their capabilities to graduate students who can generate productive employment opportunities for themselves and for others.”
“ The education at LAU is outstanding, on par with international standards.” — Ziad Sankari, LAU alumnus and entrepreneur
A select group of 52 students and alumni participated in training sessions over a period of five Saturdays, learning the skills essential to establishing a startup, including business model planning, marketing and finance. Participants pitched start-up ideas to a jury, with three winners awarded coaching sessions by Speed@BDD leaders. First-prize winner Vanessa Katar, who graduated last spring with a major in Marketing and a minor in Psychology, was also invited to attend the Global Outreach and Leadership Development Conference GOLD at LAU’s headquarters in New York this August. Her start-up idea consisted of a business-to-business mobile application called “ac-company,” allowing employees of the same “company” to “accompany” each other to work by arranging carpooling. She said she drew numerous lessons from the training, around risktaking, trialing and idea development, and would encourage other similar initiatives.