Global Entrepreneurship Week
Today marks the start of Global Entrepreneurship Week, which is being promoted by 123 countries around the world. More than 25,000 partner organizations are hosting over 40,000 events and activities in a weeklong celebration that will drive awareness for the world’s leading economic driver—entrepreneurship.
This is the third-annual Global Entrepreneurship Week, and more than 10 million present and aspiring entrepreneurs will participate in events during the week of November 14-20, 2011.
Anyone, anywhere can participate in wide-ranging activities that includes virtual and face-to-face events, competitions, and intimate networking gatherings. In the U.S. alone, 1,400 organizations will be hosting 3,500 events across most of our states. For information on entrepreneurship activities wherever you live in the world, click here.
Global Entrepreneurship Week is an initiative of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Entrepreneurial Activity, the world’s largest foundation of its kind. Here is what Carl Schramm, President and CEO of the foundation had to say about this special week:
“For one week each November, students, educators, entrepreneurs, business leaders, and government officials come together to pursue one cause—to spread the power of entrepreneurship. It’s during this time that we celebrate the innovators who bring ideas to life, drive economic growth, and expand human welfare.”
Although supported by dozens of global leaders and well-know entrepreneurs, the mainstream media seems to have totally ignored the significance of the events of this special week. In the long term, these events could be much more significant to global economic stability and growth than all the G-20 meetings combined.
How many of you are participating in a Global Entrepreneurship Week event near you?
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Entrepreneurship!
Fourteen-year-old Fraser Doherty, of Edinburgh, Scotland, certainly understands the meaning of Entrepreneurship and Innovation—he won first place in the Global Student Entrepreneurship Award competition at the 2008 Global Entrepreneurship Week. Fraser’s company, SuperJam, makes fruit jam from natural products, and sells it globally.
Frasier is a serial entrepreneur in that this is not his first venture into entrepreneurship. He has even tasted the sting of failure—his first enterprise failed because a fox ate his assets. But, like any true entrepreneur, Fraser came back with an idea for his next venture, and turned it into a success. One can only wonder what his next enterprise will be.
This story is in sharp contrast to one of my recent posts, Scandals, Innovations, and AIG, which presented the dismal picture of the high rate of school dropouts in the U.S. Instead of trying to train our students to get high scores on their SAT tests, we need to prepare more of them for entrepreneurship.
Fortunately, there is one place where aspiring young (and old) entrepreneurs can connect and begin to turn their dreams into reality—Global Entrepreneurship Week. Seventy-five countries will hold thousands of events during this week, where entrepreneurs of all ages meet to share and learn. The short video below presents a brief montage of typical events that are held around the world during this week.
(email subscribers, view on blog)
The next Global Entrepreneurship Week will be celebrated November 16-22, 2009. What can each of us do to make entrepreneurship a goal for more young people, instead of the world of the dropout?
“…in a rapidly changing world that demands new ideas faster than ever, young people must not only embrace their prevailing tendencies toward entrepreneurial thinking—they must be inspired to act on them.”
—Jonathan Ortmans
President, Public Forum Institute
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