Interviews
The interviews in the Creating Emerging Markets archive form a permanent and unique resource held in Harvard Business School’s Baker Library. Many interview transcripts can be downloaded immediately in full, and all others are available upon request. Each interview page includes supporting resources about the interviewee and her or his business. If the interview is conducted in a local language, an English translation is provided. Many of the interviews are on video. These full-length video interviews are available to qualified researchers by contacting HBS archivist Rachel Wise. Harvard ID holders are able to access the full-length videos through the website. Most Latin American interview transcripts are in Spanish and English. La mayoría de las transcripciones de las entrevistas latinoamericanas se encuentran disponibles en español e inglés.
We welcome feedback and suggestions for ways to improve the project.
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Results
- Bangladesh
Sir Fazle Hasan Abed
Founder and Chair, BRAC
(Microfinance, Development)
“I’ve never thought that you can do good only through nonprofit activities. You can do good also by doing business.”
- Turkey
Hamdi Akın
Founder and Chairman, Akfen Holding
(Construction, infrastructure)
“[W]e want these companies to last 100, 200, or even 300 years. We want them to survive in the long term. We don’t want them to just live and die with us.”
- Chile
Roberto de Andraca
Chair, Cap S.A.
(Steel)
“[I]n 1998–2000, when a severe steel price depression developed and 30% of steel companies went bankrupt. At the time we already ranked among the 20% lowest-cost steel companies.”
- Chile
Roberto Angelini Rossi
Chair, Empresas Copec S.A. and AntarChile S.A.
(Petroleum, Forestry, and Fishing)
“Businessmen are never allowed to say ‘I’m done.’ We can never sit down to see what happens. There is constant evolution ... we must provide orientation to our companies and keep on expanding and innovating.”
- Pakistan
Syed Babar Ali
Founder, Lahore University of Management Sciences
(Education; Government)
“I felt, having been in industry and business for a fair amount of time, that you could so much with management, but not enough unless you added value to what the country is producing.”
- Mexico
Alberto Baillères
CEO, Grupo Bal
(Diversified)
“One of the cornerstones of the group’s competitiveness, in comparison to our international competition, is our emphasis on human relations. We try very hard to be a family”
- India
Rahul Bajaj
Chair, Bajaj Group
(Diversified)
“We were in a socialist raj. You couldn’t make anything until you got an industrial license and you couldn’t make more than the license capacity.”
- Argentina
Susana Balbo
Owner and Chief Winemaker, Susana Balbo Wines
(Wine)
“I had to find a way to produce modern wines with little resources. It’s amazing how resourceful we can be when we need to: we are not aware of the tools we have until we start using them.”
- Nigeria
Hakeem Belo-Osagie
Chair, United Bank for Africa (currently with Etisalat Nigeria)
(Financial services)
“The biggest challenge in Africa is that you constantly have to manage the government and the regulatory agencies. They play a far more pervasive role in Africa than they do in the United States.”
- India
Shyam Benegal
Filmmaker
(Cinema)
“I have always felt that the Indian countryside was never really represented properly on the Indian screen But if you really wanted to understand the Indian psyche, you needed to look at rural India.”
- Argentina
Jorge Born
Former President, Bunge y Born (now Bunge Limited)
(Agribusiness, Food)
“You need to stay incredibly nimble to anticipate what the government will do, and governments often have no plan of any kind”
- Argentina
Federico Braun
President and Chair, Sociedad Anónima Importadora y Exportadora de la Patagonia (SAIEP) (La Anónima)
(Supermarkets)
“La Anónima is seen as a company that meets its commitments, has longtime and loyal employees—and this is important—and keeps its word. However simple they may seem, these qualities are not that easy to find.”
- India
Anand Burman
Chairman, Dabur India Limited
(Natural Consumer Products)
“We want our brand—we want the Dabur name—to signify trust.”
- Colombia
Carlos Enrique Cavelier
Chairman of the Board and Dreams Coordinator, Alquería
(Dairy)
“I’ve never thought one should use power to benefit a business: power should be used to serve society. I believe that, by building a reputation as a business leader and as a company, one can contribute technical expertise to enhance public policies for an industry – but not for personal gain.”
- Colombia
Antonio Celia
CEO, Promigas
(Natural Resources)
“At Promigas Foundation, we work to improve public education quality, and we have reached one million children in 17 years. Our motto is 'Education is Everything.' It is inclusion, equity, social mobility. Education frees people and enables them to do what they value.”
- Kenya
Dr. Manu Chandaria
Chair and CEO, Comcraft Group
(Steel and Aluminum)
“[O]ne principle that we adopted in our lifetime and with our children we always told them that money’s here today; money may not be there tomorrow. A good set of principles and values that you have, those will remain with you for your lifetime.”
- Nepal
Binod Chaudhary
Chairman, Chaudhary Group
(Diversified)
“I’m happy to say that what we envisioned—that we want to create the first Nepali multinational which will own and promote brands, which will be globally known—[has been realized].”
- India
Dr. Nalli Kuppuswami Chetti
Chair, Nalli Silk Sarees
(Textiles, retail)
“King George IV visited India... In the honor of his visit, the committee in Madras City... wanted to present one Kancheepuram saree or one cloth... They gave that order to my grandfather, because he was very particular about quality.”
- Costa Rica
Jim Damalas
Founder and CEO, Greentique Hotels
(Ecotourism)
“[H]aving a history on the property that goes back to the mid-’70s, we saw how nature had taken back what farmers had unfortunately destroyed when they deforested most of Costa Rica [we] know our customers are here for nature, more than anything else. So it pays to save the landscape.”
- South Africa
Hubert Danso
CEO and Vice Chair, Africa Investor
(Financial Services, Media)
“[O]nly 12–15 percent of all of our trade is actually intra-African. So there’s a huge opportunity there, and a need, to build that out.””