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. 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.
Interviews are freely available for research & teaching. For academic research, we ask that you credit HBS using the citations provided on the transcripts. For more information, visit our Research Guidelines page.
We welcome feedback and suggestions for ways to improve the project.
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Results
- Ghana
Kwasi Abeasi
CEO, Africa Investconsult Ltd.
(Financial Services)
“You have to negotiate. And you have to go with a team that knows how to negotiate. Otherwise you’ll get a deal that looks good. Later on you find out it’s no good.”
- 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.”
- India
Anu Aga
Thermax Private, Ltd.
(Engineering Manufacturing)
“[As a leader], you don’t have to know everything In fact, one of the beliefs I have is [that] skills can be hired. The leader has to show wisdom—that cannot be hired.”
- 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.”
- Sri Lanka
Abbas Akbarally
Chairman, Akbar Brothers
(Tea; Diversified)
“The main thing is integrity, honesty; and once the banks know that you are not going to take their money and go to the casino, they will give you the money.”
- Saudi Arabia
Muhammad Alagil
Jarir Marketing
(Electronics; office supplies; books; diversified)
“We just want to keep developing a good reputation. We want to have exciting time. We want to add something to the community.”
- 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.”
- Philippines
Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala
Ayala Corporation
(Real Estate, Infrastructure, Insurance, Banking)
“We wanted to be part and parcel of the development cycle of the country and to be relevant as an institution in a country which needed a lot of growth, a lot of development, and a lot of institutional support. [We wanted] to have an Ayala that was relevant to the national development agenda, but at the same time put capital to work and gave good return on investment.”
- Pakistan
Seema Aziz
Founder, CARE Foundation; Managing Director, Sefam
(Education and Retail)
“I understood that an education [is] the only gift which no flood can take away, which becomes a part of a person and changes lives like nothing else can.”
- 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”
- Tunisia
Ouided Bouchamaoui
Former President, Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts (UTICA); Co-Founder, Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet; CEO, Hédi Bouchamaoui Group (HBG Holding)
(Diversified, Politics)
“If we don’t have the trust of others, it’s difficult – let’s say it’s impossible to succeed. When people trust you, you have this responsibility to do well and to answer to their questions and to give them this hope.”
- 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.”
- South Africa
Robert Brozin
Co-Founder, Nando's
(Restaurants; Fast Food Franchises)
“As an entrepreneur, your attitude actually can be the difference between success and failure.”