By an NNN-Bernama Special Report by Tengku Noor Shamsiah Tengku Abdullah,
Kuala Lumpur : The two-day Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship to be held in Washington from April 26 has been described as a paradigm shift in the United States President Barack Obama’s leadership by one of the three Malaysians invited to attend the event.
Dakhshinamoorthy Balakrishnan said here Monday that Obama had made the right move by giving presidential attention to a global force in democratising commerce and bringing Islamic and non-Islamic nations together under one roof.
“Obama is actually pushing the forces towards this direction. I think it’s amazing that it’s a paradigm shift and to be able to take this kind of an approach instead of just continuing with the bilateral policies that have been happening all this while. It is again a changing move by the president,” he added.
Dakhshinamoorthy runs a financial consulting firm specialising in financial advisory services for small-time entrepreneurs. Fondly called “Dash”, the chief executive officer and director of Warisan Global, is also the host of Global Entrepreneurship Week of Malaysia.
“I think the president has to be very entrepreneurial himself to have taken this twist of things. It’s not a kind of political thinking, but he has got to take a leap to a subject (the summit) like that which affects everyone from start-up entrepreneurs,” he said in a discussion over coffee with the US Charge d’Affairs in Kuala Lumpur, Robert G. Rapson, and another Malaysian summit participant, K. Kabilan.
Mohamed Nadzmi Mohamed Salleh, the chairman of national carmaker Proton Holdings Berhad, who was not present, will also join Dash and Kabilan at the first ever summit aimed at promoting economic and social entrepreneurship globally.
The event is a vital element of the Obama Administration’s foreign economic and development policy, a policy that fosters economic growth, create jobs, promotes civil society and provides new economic opportunities for US businesses and investors.
Rapson said Obama, in his June 2009 speech in Cairo, had pledged to host a summit on entrepreneurship to broaden ties between business leaders, foundations and entrepreneurs in the United States and Muslim communities around the world.
The summit, hosted by the US Department of State and Department of Commerce at the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center in Washington, will promote entrepreneurship in South East Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
Having been an entrepreneur himself for the last 18 years in Malaysia, Dash said he was actually an entrepreneur evangelist. He runs global entrepreneurship campaigns to connect entrepreneurs around Malaysia as well as to link them with entrepreneurs from other countries.
“It is a passion that I continuously do and getting selected to the Entrepreneurial Summit, I am totally delighted and is like a dream come true. I can’t say I am an entrepreneur evangelist if I am not at the Presidential Summit, it is the forces towards that,” he said.
Asked what he has in mind for the summit, Dash said: “Looking at the participants list, the group is what possibly entrepreneurs can become in the future. It is not the old capitalists just going there but is also the future what entrepreneurship can become and I think it’s quite an amazing thing to happen,” he said.
Dash said one of the objectives of the summit is also to connect entrepreneurs and use entrepreneurship as a force to bring together a truly global world and that is the vision of the summit.
“To me it is really in line with what I and my friends have been doing. I am really looking forward to go there and bring back the knowledge. I am also grateful to the US Embassy for putting me in the International Leadership Programme,” he added.
“I will be able to enhance myself further with the entrepreneurship initiatives in the US and bring those knowledge back to our start-up entrepreneurs. I think what entrepreneurs want here is good mentors and good success stories and I think that will be fabulous. It is great opportunity (for being selected to participate in the summit).”
Echoing Dash’s views on Obama’s move, Kabilan, the editor of FreeMalaysiaToday, the latest online news publication here, said: “I agree with him but I think the summit is the culmination of a process that started immediately after the Sept 11, 2001 terror attack under the previous president.”
Kabilan, who began his journalism career with the English language daily, New Straits Times, was part of the start-up team of pioneer Malaysian online news portal Malaysiakini in 1999, and has 17 years experience as a journalist, the last 11 in online media.
“I know there are many other programmes, there is a programme to promote books on the Muslim world in the US where the journalists are asked to participate in these programmes coming up in Washington,” he said.
Kabilan said the video clip was about a Muslim family and how they are living. The video clip was more for the American public to understand the religion and the people behind it.
“But the summit has taken it to a higher level, from the grassroots, going to the business people. it’s a good thing and more should be done,” he said.
Kabilan said he felt quite honoured to take part in the summit and thanked the US Embassy here for getting it done for him.
“I intend to meet people in my line of profession on how things are done. It’s a chance for me to do networking to find out how on-line media can be developed further. I really hope to meet some of them from the same industry there,” he said.
“I think I should be able to learn something from meeting the people there even if not from my own line, but from other entrepreneurs from the rest of the world. The summit will be opened by president Obama himself, it’s a big thing.
“My daughters are excited they want to go as well. I got a long list of people asking for autograph of the president. I don’t know whether I can get close to him. I feel honoured and intend to make full use of the summit, how we can develop and work along with other people in promoting online media.”
Rapson said: “We think the summit is a great event, obviously as it is going to be launched by President Obama. The idea is to bring entrepreneurs from all states and background to Washington to have an opportunity to meet, network and exchange ideas, to build bonds and ties in the United States and from other parts of the world where the US connection was very strong.
“As you can see, 250 invitees from 58 different countries (are invited). There will be senior US government officials to the president and a number of distinguished analysts, co-founder of Facebook, founder of Yahoo and other distinguished entrepreneurs from all walks of life and background.”