On Tuesday, 16^th September 2025. Dr. Muhammad Shoaib Farooq (Chairperson, Department of Artificial Intelligence, UMT Lahore) and Mr. Badar Khushnood (Executive in Residence, LUMS Business School) led a panel discussion on “Business Start-Ups sand the Role of Innovation/Technology in the Knowledge Economy” to participants of the 38^th Senior Management Course at the National Institute of Public Administration, Lahore.

Dr. Shoaib Farooq opened with the gig economy’s historical and statistical trajectory, noting Pakistan’s rapid digital uptake and youthful labour force. He reviewed age profiles of gig workers (men 25-65+, women 17-65+), motivations for online work, and Pakistan’s position: 200 million digital access. Raast instant payments, US$3.8 billion FY2025 IT exports, and US$60 million in start-up capital this year. He highlighted Pakistan’s 4^th largest global freelancing market, with 2.37 million active freelancers, 10% of worldwide freelancing earnings, and 25,000 annual IT graduates. National training pipelines, DigiSkills (11.3 million trained), Zong e-Lancing (10,000 trainees), and PITB’s e-Earn co-working network were cited alongside the National Freelance Facilitation Policy targeting +1 million freelancers by 2027. He closed with policy directions on formalisation, protections, and the evolving interface between AI and gig work.

Mr. Badar Khushnood started with global overview of the situation and covered changing environment under the AI revolution and changing work environment. He covered the policies adopted by different countries to capture the potential of knowledge economy and their impacts as against the policies adopted by the government in Pakistan. He, while speaking about the potential of Pakistan, surveyed Pakistan’s tech/start-up ecosystem, underscoring scale and headroom: 4^th largest freelancing base, a US$5 billion domestic e-commerce market (2022), 15,000 SECP-registered IT/TTeS firms (6,000 exporting), and 140 million 3G/4G subscribers. He stressed consistent, export-oriented policies, competitive taxation and regulation, skills and STEM pipelines, and easier market entry to convert digital diffusion into sustained services exports and venture formation.

In an engaged Q&A participants explored pathways to deepen early-stage finance, de-risk compliance for SMEs, strengthen IP/contract enforcement, and embed AI-readiness (literacy, compute, responsible-AI norms) with penelists emphasising coordinated public-private action to translate Pakistan’s digital momentum into productivity and jobs.