Keynote Presentation 4

The fourth and final keynote presentation for ICBM 2019 took place after the lunch on the final day (April 27, 2019) of the conference. This presentation was managed by the session chairs Prof. Dr. Mohammad Tamim, Pro-Vice Chancellor, Brac University and Prof. Dr. Mirza Azizul Islam from Brac Business School (BBS), Brac University.

The speakers for this session were Mr. Anis A. Khan, Managing Director & CEO, Mutual Trust Bank Limited, Prof. Dr. Akbar Ali Khan, Brac Business School, Brac University, Mr. Sanjeev Gathani, CEO, Better Business Governance (BBG), Singapore and Mr. Ishtiaq Ahmed, CEO, Kazi Farms Group.

Prof. Dr. Akbar Ali Khan started off the session with his presentation on technology and its impacts on the recent developments in business. He stated that technology is changing the world and no one can deny it. Dr. Khan then went on to talk about how technology has gone on to revolutionize businesses over the years and how it will continue to do so for decades to come.

The floor was then given to Mr. Anis A. Khan, who gave a brief talk on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through entrepreneurship, commerce and investment. He was also full of praise for BRAC and its continuous contribution in bringing development in different sectors of society including healthcare financing and health kiosks. Mr Anis is confident that by building stronger partnerships, and renewing focus on technology, innovation and challenges faced by the urban community, we can provide our citizens with the tools needed to achieve financial inclusion in Bangladesh.

Mr. Sanjeev Gathani talked about cybersecurity, the contemporary challenges faced due to cyber-attacks and their possible remedies. Addressing the audience, Mr. Gathani pointed out that our habit of casually using free Wi-Fi without considering the potential security threats is extremely dangerous to our personal information. “Money is not important today, it is information that is important”, said Mr Gathani. “Protection of information is very important for universities and the corporate sector. Technology knows more about you than you know about technology itself”. He also advised us that we should be proactive when it comes to dealing with such threats and not reactive.

Mr. Ishtiaq Ahmed focused his lecture on bridging strategy between the academia and industry. He emphasized on the importance of solving localised case studies that portray the business and industrial scenario of Bangladesh. Students cannot know what is going on in this country if they only work on foreign case studies that are worked out in universities like Harvard. Mr. Ishtiaq also pointed out how majority of our faculties lack hands-on industry experience in Bangladesh and that a paradigm shift is needed that will lead the transformation of bridging the gap between academia and industry.

The session was then brought to an end with the distribution of appreciation certificates among the speakers and session chairs.

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