Global Entrepreneurship Week

The inaugural Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) will take place in the week of 17-23 Nov. 2008. Jointly coordinated by Kauffman Foundation in the US and Make Your Mark in UK, the goal of the week-long program is to encourage people from around the world to celebrate the spirit of innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity during one common week every year. To-date, organizations in 78 countries from around the world have committed to host a wide variety of events and activities during this inaugural GEW week.

I applaud this global campaign to raise awareness and interest in entrepreneurship, and am pleased to say that my centre (The NUS Entrepreneurship Centre) has taken the initiative to jointly host GEW in Singapore with the Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE). Together, we have engaged 35 other partner institutions to organize more than 40 events and activities throughout the GEW week. You can check out the latest GEW happenings in Singapore at this website -- http://entrepreneurshipweeksg.org. You can also find out what other countries are doing at this global website -- www.unleashingideas.org. A number of experimental global flagship events will take place to enable people from around the world to participate in simultaneously, including "Speednetwork the Globe" and the "Global Innovation Tournament".

Like any start-up idea, this year's inaugural GEW will probably be somewhat experimental and unpolished, but I believe that GEW truly has the potential to become not only THE annual platform for nations to celebrate the spirit of entrepreneurship in their respective countries, but also to emerge as an interesting global virtual platform for new entrepreneurial ideas from anywhere in the world to be paraded and tested on a global scale. I would therefore like to urge you to give this new initiative your support by attending events in your country that interest you, and by tuning in to the global website to see what is happening around the globe and blogging about them. More importantly, I encourage you to see the GEW as your opportunity to make your mark on a global scale, by unleashing new social networking ideas and novel events/games/activities that will capture the imagination and interest of the millions of entrepreneurially-minded people who will be tuning in from around the world. I look forward in particular to your suggestion on how my centre and ACE can work with you to launch your ideas in this and future GEW, not just in Singapore, but also to the world.