Global Entrepreneurship Week II

The Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) has started this week. I have attended two of the many events organized in Singapore so far -- the World Cafe organized by Temasek Polytechnic on the first day, and the Opening Ceremony on the second day. As my centre is one of the co-organizers of GEW Singapore, I'm particularly pleased that the Kauffman Foundation has chosen Singapore as one of the selected countries outside USA/UK that they will give on the ground coverage. In fact, they actually sent two people to participate in Singapore's Opening Ceremony -- Jonathan Ortmans, the man in charge of the GEW world-wide, and Dr. Paul Kedrosky, who is doing videoblogging of GEW happenings in selected countries worldwide. You can see his blog post on Singapore's GEW Opening Ceremony at the main GEW website http://unleashingideas.org/.

At the World Cafe, I enjoyed the opportunity to interact with the primary and secondary school kids as well as polytechnic students, especially hearing their views on what they think are the most important traits of an entrepreneur. We were also asked to discuss the question on whether entrepreneurs are born or made, which I didn't like so much -- for reasons I can't fathom, many people seem to like to ask this question. Interestingly, the topic that seemed to have generated the most amount of participation among the kids (at least in the tables where I participated) was that of parents' reluctance to let their kids try anything entrepreneurial that detracts from their study, and the pressure on the kids to study hard and get a good job.

I was happy to note that there were quite a few new faces at the Opening Ceremony. I think it is important that our activities reach out to new people -- there is no point to keep preaching to the converted.

I am looking forward to attending more events during the rest of the week. In particular, I think the Speednetwork The Globe, organized by The Digital Movement (TDM) in Singapore, seems interesting and worth checking out -- visit www.thedigitalmovement.org/gew.