For Once, Washington Forgets the P.R.

It was not business as usual in our nation’s capital today.

The Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship that kicked off in Washington D.C. is turning out to be an atypical event.

Organized as a result of a pledge President Obama made last June in Cairo to “deepen ties between business leaders, foundations and social entrepreneurs in the United States and Muslim communities around the world,” I expected this summit to be, in true Washington form, tightly scripted. Washington isn’t, after all, a fan of surprises.

But imagine my surprise as I walked into the ballroom where the summit is being held, to find rows of round tables, instead of chairs lined up to face the stage. I was also surprised to see that there was also no podium where speeches would be delivered. The center of the room was filled, instead, with a row of Davos-style brown leather armchairs. Washington was serious when it said that it wanted to have a conversation with the Muslim world.

“The goal of the summit is to get the entrepreneurs to engage with each other,” said Pradeep Ramamurthy, the National Security Council senior director for global engagement. “You’ll notice that most of the panels have a senior U.S. government person, functioning more as a moderator.” I did notice.

I also noticed that those moderators were allowing the panelists and invited delegates to speak their minds, even when it might have been uncomfortable to do so. That’s a testament to why this Presidential Summit isn’t just a public relations exercise.

Comments made by African mobile entrepreneur Mohammed “Mo” Ibrahim certainly made USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah regret calling on him during a session focused on access to capital. Ibrahim questioned the panel’s focus on “social” entrepreneurship when the topic at hand was finance. “Aren’t we talking about social entrepreneurship tomorrow?” he asked.

He had a point. In a session where “venture capital, “private equity” “angel investing and “exit strategy” should have dominated, Melody Barnes, the White House director for domestic policy kept bringing up social entrepreneurship and the efforts made by individuals solving pressing challenges such as poverty, disease and hunger. Her fellow panelists, Arif Naqvi, CEO of Abraaj Capital and Putera Sampoerna, of the Indonesian Sampoerna Foundation didn’t follow her lead.

In fact Naqvi and Sampoerna talked like the hard-nosed investors one would expect to find on Sandhill Road or Wall Street. “The jury is out on whether microfinance creates jobs,” Sompoerna, who made billions running a tobacco empire said, “It has certainly alleviated poverty but my feeling is that it doesn’t create the jobs necessary to satisfy a country’s needs.”

Naqvi and Sampoerna made it clear that the needs countries like Indonesia and the other 49 represented at this summit are no different from those in the West. The White House may have brought together entrepreneurs from Muslim-majority countries, but these Muslim-majority entrepreneurs have no intention of being pigeon-holed into such a category.

“An entrepreneur is an entrepreneur,” said Tunis-based Douja Gharbi. She was responding to one of the delegates who asked her panel “Perspectives on Successful Entrepreneurship” to define “Muslim entrepreneur.” “There is no difference between a Muslim entrepreneur and any other entrepreneur,” she said.

There is, however, a stark difference in how the White House is approaching this event. Gharbi’s panel was a prime example. Three out of the four panelists were women. On a topic focused on entrepreneurial successes, and not “women’s issues,” that would be almost unheard of in Silicon Valley. There, one only hears the stories of boy wonders such as Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Mark Zuckerman.

“That didn’t ever occur to us,” Ramamurthy said. “We just wanted to put together an event that started a positive dialogue.”

The dialogue itself isn’t unusual. The stories of “how I became an entrepreneur and failed” that were ones every entrepreneur has heard before. What make them compelling is the context in which those stories have unfolded, in places such as Indonesia, where as Jakarta-based Sandiago Uno, noted they’re not encouraged to dream. “You guys [in the West] are allowed to have a dream. It is that dream that will carry you.”

Tri Mumpuni, an Ashoka fellow who started a rural electrification project in Indonesian villages was more sobering. She reminded the audience that most people at the conference operate amid political conflict and tension. Referring to her own country where villagers preferred to spend their time thinking about war, she talked about how she convinced them to shift their attention to entrepreneurship. “Making weapons and turbines is the same,” she said. “Turbines are more useful for your village.”

“Useful is exactly how I would describe this day,” said Aramex founder and CEO Fadi Ghandour. Aramex was the first Arab company to list on the NASDAQ. “Look at all of these people here. Can you feel the energy?”

Yes I do Fadi. I just wish it were an energy that the rest of America could feel too. The only problem with this Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship is the absence of Silicon Valley venture capitalists, Wall Street bankers and, most importantly, those Americans who mistrust, or worse yet, don’t know or understand Muslims.

Overcoming mistrust is one of the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship’s stated goals.

“This is a new beginning,” President Obama said to the delegates at the end of the first day “that is based on mutual interest and mutual respect,” referring to the approach his White House is taking in engaging with the Muslim world.

“We need a sustained effort to listen to each other and to learn from each other; to respect one another,” the president said. “I pledged to forge new partnerships not simply between governments but also between people on issues that matter the most in their daily lives.”

If day one of this summit is any indication, the White House is listening, learning and engaged in respect. And that, most certainly, is not business as usual in this town.

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Elmira Bayrasli writes and works on global economic issues. She is working on a book that looks at aid and entrepreneurship in the fight against poverty.