Turning Zain into a Telecom Giant

The biography of a pioneering business leader who inspires extraordinary loyalty in his colleagues, A Passion for Adventure is a fast-paced life story, full of tips on leadership; glimpses of Al Barrak's personal business philosophy and values.

Boston (I-Newswire) September 10, 2012 - As the Arab spring sweeps the Middle East, old ways are disappearing. Communications technology is breaking down national barriers and undermining rulers, while the youth look to new role models. Instead of the litany of Arab political failures, they look to business and the arts for inspiration.

Dr. Saad Al Barrak has been a pioneer of this Arab renaissance. In just seven years (2002-2009), he transformed a moribund ex-state-owned telecoms operator, MTC, from its base of 500,000 customers in Kuwait into the international giant Zain, a company that reached over 72 million customers across 23 countries in the Middle East and Africa, introducing the world’s first boundary-less roaming.

Over the same period, revenues leapt from $570m to a staggering $8 billion, while the company’s market capitalization went from $2.5 billion to once peak at $32 billion. Dr. Al Barrak is also the mastermind of the creation of the Zain brand, which in just 2 years after its launch in 2007 was valued at $2.9 billion in 2009, making it the second most valuable brand in the region.

Educated in the U.S. and London, Dr. Al Barrak earned a double major in Electrical Engineering and Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Ohio; he undertook Harvard Business School's Program for Management Development (PMD) in 1999; and completed his PhD in IS/IT Management from the University of London in 2001.

A PASSION FOR ADVENTURE (Bloomsbury USA, Sept 2012) shares this story and his distinctive philosophy of leadership and management, insisting that the purpose of business is to create "a wonderful world." Leading global consultants McKinsey admit Dr. Al Barrak has changed their business models. Renowned educational institutions such as Harvard and Oxford Universities have used Zain as a business case study in their recent teachings.

Dr. Al Barrak’s approach has its origins in the souks of his native Kuwait, but is shaped by his US and British education; by invasion, occupation, and war in the modern Middle East and by modern management gurus like Steve Jobs. His call to "be bold, be daring, be different," his entrepreneurial taste for risk and his understanding of emerging markets led him - in a single breath-taking takeover - to expand into Sub-Saharan Africa, where other CEOs were afraid to invest.

In A PASSION FOR ADVENTURE, among other insightful happenings while at the helm at Zain, Dr. Al Barrak tells the inside story of the audacious, 2005 "Easter weekend" $3.3 billion purchase of the African operator Celtel and the course of action undertaken into forming the successful Zain brand.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Saad al Barrak was born in Kuwait and is an engineer and a businessman of international repute. Formerly CEO of the Zain Group from July 2002 until his in 2010, he led the rebranding effort from MTC to Zain, a brand that became one of the most distinguished names in the Middle East and Africa region, and the sweetheart of the telecommunications industry.

Prior to his appointment with Zain, Dr. Al Barrak was Managing Director of International Turnkey Systems (ITS), one of the leading IT companies in the Middle East and North Africa region. He has served on several company boards in the Middle East and Europe and received many distinguished leadership awards.
At the end of 2010, Al Barrak founded ‘ILA’, an advisory firm capitalizing on the emerging opportunities arising from the convergence between IT and telecoms.