IBA Center for Entrepreneurial Development, Innovation and Research treated negotiation as a core survival skill rather than a soft skill during a hands-on session for SAP participants, framing the ability to hold ground, read counterparts, and reach workable outcomes as something founders cannot afford to leave underdeveloped. The session was followed immediately by assessments testing participants’ conflict resolution abilities under real pressure, a structure that denied participants the comfort of treating negotiation as theory to be absorbed passively. By moving straight from instruction into evaluation while the material was still fresh, the format forced SAP participants to demonstrate, rather than simply describe, how they would actually behave when a negotiation stopped going according to plan, which tends to reveal far more about a founder’s readiness than a purely instructional session ever could.
The learning continued on September 5th, as CIE and CITE participants moved through a sequence of sessions covering distinct dimensions of tech entrepreneurship and product development, each building on the one before it. The day opened with Tech Market Analysis, led by Faisal Siddiqui, walking founders through customer personas, TAM, SAM, and SOM frameworks, and go-to-market strategy, giving participants a structured method for sizing a market opportunity rather than relying on instinct or anecdotal demand signals. This kind of framework matters most for founders who are already convinced their idea is valuable but have not yet forced themselves to quantify precisely who would buy it, how many of them exist, and what portion of that group is realistically reachable given limited early resources.
The sessions then moved into Designing Tech Products with Mohammad Ali Malik, who unpacked the customer journey in detail, before shifting into quantitative and qualitative market research methods for CIE participants specifically, led by Zainab Faisal. Covering both quantitative and qualitative research approaches within the same curriculum reflects an understanding that neither method alone gives founders a complete picture, since quantitative data reveals scale and patterns across a broad sample while qualitative research uncovers the underlying reasons, frustrations, and context that raw numbers alone cannot explain. Teaching both together, rather than treating one as sufficient, pushes participants toward a more rigorous validation process before they commit resources to building something the market may not actually want in the form they imagined.
The day closed with a session from Fizza Shah on product and brand development for non-tech ventures, backed by real case studies, ensuring that participants building businesses outside a purely technology driven model were not left without a track tailored to their own circumstances. Rounding out the day this way signaled that IBA CEDIR’s entrepreneurship curriculum is deliberately built to serve founders across different venture types rather than assuming every participant is building a software product, an assumption that can otherwise leave non-tech founders working through frameworks poorly suited to how their businesses actually acquire customers and build a brand. Taken together, the day’s sessions moved participants from the interpersonal demands of negotiation through the analytical rigor of market sizing and research and into the practical craft of product and brand development, covering much of the skill range that real founders draw on well beyond their time in the program.
Follow the SPIN IDG WhatsApp Channel for updates across the Smart Pakistan Insights Network covering all of Pakistan’s technology ecosystem.
