Dubai: Born and raised in Sharjah, Badr Jafar has always been fascinated with invention and the process of creating something useful from scratch.
“I’d spend hours piecing random objects together trying to build new tools or machines that could perform certain functions that I had imagined. Of course, the vast majority of my designs wouldn’t work the way I had hoped, but I was inspired by the great inventor and polymath Thomas Edison’s quote on his journey to inventing the light bulb: ‘I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work’,” said Jafar, CEO of Crescent Enterprises and founder of The Pearl Initiative, a non-profit organisation that promotes a corporate culture of accountability and transparency as a key driver of competitiveness in the Gulf region.
Jafar left the UAE at the age of 16 to complete secondary school at Eton College in UK, and went on to pursue a masters in fluid mechanics engineering at Cambridge University with additional qualifications in astrophysics. “However, towards the end of my degree, and having often experimented with new ideas for business, I realised I needed to close my formal educational loop with exposure to business principles. So I spent a year at the Cambridge Judge Business School to study social innovation,” he said.
Following university, and a number of work placements in various sectors from oil and gas to retail, Jafar went on to launch a series of diverse start-ups. Most of them did not succeed. “However, I was fortunate enough to grow one venture to a successful business that operated in 11 countries, which I eventually sold to our Japanese distributor for a healthy profit,” he said.
“I returned to the UAE in 2002 to join the family business, and in addition to building new ventures at Crescent Petroleum, I launched Crescent Enterprises as a separate entity to operate in a diverse range of strategic sectors, including ports and logistics, business aviation, healthcare, power and engineering, and private equity.”
Describing himself a “frustrated polymath” — a polymath being a person who draws on different bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems — Jafar’s role models have been people such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, Omar Khayyam, and “my father and grandfather”.
Emirati identity, according to Jafar, is a unique blend of deep tradition and the modern spirit. It is a source of deep yet humble pride. “Our founding father Shaikh Zayed taught us that while we must always be proud of our heritage and culture, we should also be fearlessly forward-looking, dynamic and adaptable to change. Our enlightened leadership today has carried forward this legacy, and as a result, we have set benchmarks not just in the Arab world, but across the globe,” he said.
“As a proud Emirati social-conscious businessman who fervently supports diversity, innovation and sustainable growth, I project this identity throughout my work. As an example, I recently launched CE-Ventures as an incubator to create socially-conscious, sustainable businesses that have the potential to demonstrate the UAE’s innovative spirit, and ability to create global brands.”
The UAE, he said, has witnessed numerous globally significant milestones in its relatively brief 45-year history.
“One of my biggest sources of national pride is our growing role in strengthening the world’s humanitarian systems, and in our conviction to embrace humanitarian diplomacy as a key national policy. This spirit of rising as a nation by lifting others is such a powerful message to our youth, and one that personally inspired me to get engaged in this field.”
Core values
“There is a common theme in the businesses I get involved with, and what I do in general: a deep sense of purpose. I believe that a business without a sense of purpose is a poor one, regardless of how much profit it might be making.”
Advice for upcoming Emirati business leaders
You spend 99.9 per cent of your life working on the path, and 0.1 per cent experiencing the euphoria of a success or the disappointment of a failure. If you’re not fulfilled by the journey, you’re wasting your life.
Embrace failure, learn from mistakes and see then as an opportunity. Just don’t make a habit of it.
Create opportunities for other people to put their energy into something that moves them, as this is the most effectively way of building a great team to help you achieve your vision.
Once you succeed, always ‘send the elevator back down’ to help lift up those who are in the position you once were. This sense of giving back is in our societal DNA as Emiratis, and you should never forget this.
