My Canvas

“Efficiency, scaled into control.” (A concluding reflection on leadership, entrepreneurship, culture, and control) Before I talk about Amazon , I need to pause. Because this blog didn’t start here. It didn’t start with warehouses, algorithms, or delivery trucks. It started much earlier—with a discomfort I couldn’t shake as a business student and later as someone working across corporate environments in global markets . A discomfort around what we are taught, what we admire, and what we quietly accept as “success.” This piece is the end of a chain—but not the end of the question. How This Conversation Unfolded (and Why It Matters) This entire series followed a very natural progression—one question leading to another, each more uncomfortable than the last. It started with leadership : questioning whether leadership is genuine service or simply control disguised as empowerment. (Read 👉 Here .) That question led directly into entrepreneurship : if leadership shapes power, entreprene...

“Designed perfection, disciplined beneath.” I don’t want to sound biased. I really don’t. But ever since I became a business student—and later when I stepped into corporate roles across global markets —I’ve been trying to find one thing that no textbook ever clearly explains: the truth . The truth behind what we are actually being trained for. In universities, we’re taught frameworks, leadership models, and “ideal” organizational cultures. In corporations, we’re trained to execute, align, deliver, and optimize. Somewhere in between, an unspoken belief is planted in our minds: if you learn this well enough, you can build the next Apple. But here’s my reality-bitten perspective—one that isn’t sugar-coated: Most of what we are trained for is not freedom. It’s structure. And that realization becomes uncomfortable when we start talking about companies we admire the most—especially Apple . Why Apple Becomes the Benchmark for Everything Let’s be honest with ourselves. When people tal...

“When vision turns into power.”   (A continuation of my leadership conversation) In my previous piece on leadership , I questioned something that still sits uncomfortably with me: whether modern leadership is about genuine service or simply a well-packaged system of control. That thought didn’t end there. If anything, it pushed me toward another closely related idea— entrepreneurship . Because if leadership decides how power is used, entrepreneurship often decides who gets it in the first place. And there is perhaps no better—or more complicated—example than Mark Zuckerberg . This is not an attempt to glorify him, nor to tear him down. It’s an attempt to slow the narrative down and look at it without the usual shine. Entrepreneurship: A Bigger Idea Than We Admit Entrepreneurship is often reduced to a headline: start a company, scale it, exit rich . But that definition misses the real point. At its core, entrepreneurship is about spotting an opportunity before it becomes obvious—...

“When power floats without accountability.” Ever since my graduation days, one subject has followed me like a shadow I could never outrun: leadership . I have read obsessively—books, case studies, theories, frameworks—trying to decode that one persistent question: Is leadership something you are born with, or something painfully built through training and self-improvement? For a long time, I accepted the textbook answers. Then I stopped believing them. Because the deeper I went, the more uncomfortable the realization became. Leadership, historically, doesn’t emerge in a vacuum. It often rises from oppression, imbalance, or social injustice . When systems fail people, leaders appear—sometimes as protectors, sometimes as products of the very inequality they claim to solve. Yet in the contemporary corporate world, the leaders we admire, quote, and glorify seem to follow a very different trajectory. They didn’t necessarily rise because a system was broken; they rose because they were hande...

“From vaults of gold to streams of data—this is where real business value lives now.” I remember sitting in a bank office back in 2008. I had just finished my MBA, and my world was defined by the traditional hustle of the financial sector—physical paperwork, face-to-face meetings, and very "safe" marketing. But life has a funny way of throwing curveballs. My first real dive into the digital world happened between 2014 and 2016 at an online fashion retailer in Dubai, and honestly? It changed everything I thought I knew about business. Seeing how a single digital campaign could outperform months of traditional "boots on the ground" sales was my wake-up call. It gave me a crystal-clear picture of how conventional advertising was becoming a relic of the past while digital was scaling up at an unbelievable rate. The old ways weren't just slowing down; they were becoming obsolete. In 2018, I decided to move back to Pakistan, and that’s when I truly saw the global nat...

"Global brands may travel far—but the future of FMCG is built where people live." We talk about the " global village " as if it’s this perfect, connected utopia. But if you’re standing in a market in Lahore or a shop in Dhaka, the reality looks a bit different. You see shelves lined with the same shampoo, the same snacks, and the same cleaners you’d find in London. It feels convenient, sure. But look closer, and you’ll see the cracks in the foundation. This is the FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) paradox. We’ve spent decades perfecting a system of capitalism that relies on massive, centralized factories—usually in places like China or Mexico—to feed the entire planet. But this "one-size-fits-all" distribution model is failing. It’s too heavy for the planet and too fragile for the volatile world we live in today. The Hidden Price of "Cheap" Living in a developing nation like Pakistan, we often feel like an afterthought in the global supply chain...

"When the giants fight, the shadows stretch across the world." The world is often called a " global village ," but for those of us living in developing nations like Pakistan, it feels more like a small house where the parents are having a violent, glass-shattering argument. I’ve always viewed my home as an "under-developed" space—a term that sounds clinical but feels incredibly heavy in practice. For countries like mine, and many others across South Asia and Africa, survival isn't a solo act. We are tethered to the whims of giants. Whether it’s the historical reach of the U.S., the legacy of Russia, or the massive, recent embrace of China, our economic heartbeat is synced to their trade policies. Since the birth of capitalism and its subsequent clashes with socialism and communism, we’ve watched trade wars happen from the sidelines. But we aren’t just spectators; we are the ones who feel the tremors when the ground shakes. Today, as the U.S. and China...

"Where desire is designed—and choice quietly disappears." We’ve all heard that classic, stinging critique of our modern lives: "We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like." For years, I lived at the very epicenter of that sentiment. Working within the high-octane luxury retail sector in Dubai, I was surrounded by the perfection of Tom Ford , the prestige of Hermès , and the relentless allure of brands like Gucci and LV . But being on the "inside" changes your perspective. You start to realize that the industry isn't just about selling beautiful things; it’s a clinical, highly engineered play on the human psyche. There’s a line from Fight Club that has haunted me throughout my career: "The things you own end up owning you." In the world of high-end fashion, this isn't just a movie quote—it’s a business model. While I truly admire the artistry of a Brunello Cucinelli stitch or a Pra...

“Progress darkens the sky while cities learn to breathe through masks.” I’ve always been someone who looks at the world through a bit of a cynical lens, especially when it comes to things like capitalism and globalization. It feels like every time we talk about "progress," we’re actually talking about how local cultures are being flattened or how imperialism is just finding new ways to capture us. It’s almost like a modern form of slavery, just with better branding. And now, we’re seeing the ultimate cost of this "progress" written across the sky in the form of a changing climate. We aren't just talking about abstract numbers anymore; we’re living through it. Whether it’s the wildfires tearing through forests or the massive floods that seem to happen every other season, the earth is clearly pushing back. But for those of us in Pakistan, specifically in Punjab, the crisis hits a lot closer to home. The Toxic Competition: Lahore vs. Delhi There’s a dark irony in ...

“An economy engineered for ascent—its foundations built on imbalance, discipline, and risk.” I’ve been watching China’s economic rise with a mix of awe and deep skepticism. For a country like mine, Pakistan, or for many nations across Africa, the Chinese story looks like the ultimate cheat code for development. But when you peel back the layers of this "miracle," you find a complex, often brutal machinery of state-directed growth. Is this a model that can actually be replicated, or is it a specific set of circumstances that might lead to a dead end? The Ghost of the "Big Push": When Planning Fails You can’t talk about where China is going without looking at where it stumbled. The Great Leap Forward (GLF) is usually remembered as a massive failure of central planning, a "fiasco" that tried to force industrialization overnight. The logic was simple but flawed: squeeze the rural population to fund heavy industry. By 1958, the leadership was making wild clai...

“A global identity shaped at the intersection of culture, capital, and power.” I’ve always been stuck on this one question: how does culture actually work? I don’t just mean the music we listen to or the food we eat, but the invisible "programming" that tells us who we are and where we fit. My own life has been a bit of a whirlwind in this regard. I was born in Pakistan, but I’ve lived in the UK and the Middle East for over eight years. When you move between these worlds, you realize the " global village " isn't just a friendly exchange of ideas. It’s actually a massive machine. Looking back on my travels, I’ve become pretty skeptical of how our "norms" develop. I often argue that what we call culture is actually the byproduct of imperialism—first the historical kind, and now a "corporate imperialism" fueled by global capitalism . We aren't just sharing traditions; we are living in a world where our very identities are shaped by the needs...