Entrepreneur Ship Development

Successfully Enterpreneure

Executive Summary

Everyone is ignorant, only on different subjects. To learn is to acquire knowledge or skill. Learning also may involve a change in attitude. Learning is not just a change in attitude; it is a change in the way a man thinks, understands, or feels. Learning some things depends on other perceptions which have preceded these learning's, and on the availability of time to sense and relate these new things to the earlier perceptions. Thus, sequence and time are necessary. After studying the theoretical aspect of a subject matter, understanding its practical implications is one of the prime steps of learning.

Our assignment is on history of legendary and successful Entrepreneur, which is fully in the organizational context. During the process of preparing this assignment, we could enrich our knowledge about many aspects of the Entrepreneurial Management that we have explored with the light of our limited knowledge.

The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady acceleration. Therefore, we have chosen Sir Fazle Hasan Abed - a living legendary leader, organizer, risk taker and an innovator who has cosmopolitan acceptance to complete our assignment. His life history as a successful entrepreneur inspired us to take extra interest and effort to know about him and we have become more resourceful on this living legend.

SIR FAZLE HASAN ABED - A SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEUR

Born 1936 (age 74-75)

Baniachong, British India (now in Habiganj District, Bangladesh)

Residence Bangladesh

Nationality Bangladeshi/British

Education Naval Architecture

Occupation Founder of BRAC

Parents Syed Mustafa Ali (father)

Introduction

An entrepreneur is person who assumes the organization, management, and risks of a business enterprise. He assumes the risk and management of business; an undertaker of economic enterprises, in contrast to the ordinary capitalist, who, strictly speaking, merely owns an enterprise and may choose to take no part in its day-to-day operation. Sir Fazle Hasan Abed is an icon in the history of entrepreneurship. He is a Founder & Chairperson of BRAC - Born in Bangladesh in 1936 and he was educated at Dhaka and Glasgow Universities. The 1971 Liberation War of Bangladesh had a profound effect on Abed, then in his thirties, a professional accountant who was holding a senior Corporate Executive position at Shell Oil. The war dramatically changed the direction of his life: he left his job and went to London to devote himself to Bangladesh's War of Independence. There, Abed helped initiate a campaign called "Help Bangladesh" to organize funds to raise awareness about the war in Bangladesh. The war over, Abed returned to newly independent Bangladesh to find the economy of his country in ruins. Millions of refugees, who had sought shelter in India during the war, started trekking back into the country. Their relief and rehabilitation called for urgent efforts. Abed decided to initiate his own, by setting up BRAC to rehabilitate returning refugees in a remote area in northeastern Bangladesh. This work led him and BRAC to deal with the long-term task of improving living conditions of the rural poor. He directed his policy towards helping the poor develop their capacity to manage and control their own destiny. Thus, BRAC's primary objectives emerged as alleviation of poverty and empowerment of the poor. Under Abed's leadership, in the span of only three decades, BRAC grew to become the largest development organization in the world in terms of the scale and diversity of its interventions.

Abed has also received several honorary degrees including Doctor of Humane Letters from Yale University in 2007, Doctor of Laws from Columbia University in 2008, Doctor of Letters from the University of Oxford in 2009 and Doctorate of Laws from the University of Bath in 2010.

Early life

Fazle Hasan Abed was born in 1936 into the esteemed Hasan family, in Baniachong, British India (now in Bangladesh's Habiganj District). Fazle Abed's father and his three uncles were adopted by Syed Shamsul Huda , who was one the most influential personalities in Calcutta. Under Syed Shamsul Huda's direction, Fazle Abed's father Syed Mustafa Ali and his three uncles received education from the prestigious St. Xavier's College, Calcutta[3]. However Fazle Abed's family moved out of Calcutta and he matriculated from Pabna Zilla School and went on to complete his higher secondary education from Dhaka College.

He left home to attend University of Glasgow , where, and in an effort to break away from tradition and do something radically different - he studied Naval Architecture. But there was little work in ship building in Pakistan and a career in Naval Architecture would make returning home difficult. With that in mind, Abed joined the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants in London, completing his professional education in 1962.

Abed returned to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) to join Shell Oil Company and quickly rose to head its finance division. His time at Shell exposed Abed to the inner workings of a large conglomerate and provided him with insight into corporate management, which would become invaluable to him later in life.

It was during his time at Shell that the devastating cyclone of 1970 hit the eastern coastal regions of the country, killing 300,000 people. The cyclone had a profound effect on Abed - in the face of such devastation, the comforts and perks of a corporate executive's life ceased to have any attraction for him. Together with friends, Abed created HELP, an organization that provided relief and rehabilitation to the worst affected in the island of Manpura, which had lost three quarters of its population in the disaster.

Soon after, Bangladesh's own struggle for independence from Pakistan began and circumstances forced Abed to leave the country. He found refuge in England, where he set up Action Bangladesh to lobby for his country's independence with the governments of Europe.

Professional Experience:

1972- Founder and Executive Director, BRAC. The largest Non-Governmental Development Organisation in Bangladesh.

1968-71 Treasurer and Head of Finance, Pakistan Shell Oil Company Ltd.

1965-68 Management