Welcome to ‘The Startup State’ - a weekly bulletin from the GEN Policy and Research team highlighting key entrepreneurship news, reports, commentary and features from around the world.
News
- The United Nations has produced the ‘Pact for the Future’ that charts the path toward achieving the SDGs and responding to emerging challenges and opportunities. The pact covers sustainable development; international peace and security; science, technology and innovation and a global digital compact; youth and future generations, and a more equitable, inclusive and effective global governance (UN)
- The World Intellectual Property Office’s latest Global Innovation Index identifies a “major softening in leading indicators of future innovative activity” as it warns of “dark clouds for innovation investments” (WIPO)
- Morocco has published ‘Digital Morroco 2030: The national digital transformation strategy’ to make the country one of the world’s digital hubs. The $113m initiative aims to train 100,000 young people annually in digital skills and sets the goal of employing 240,000 people in the digital sector (Atalayar)
Research
- The state of investments in Iraq - 2023
This Five One Invest inaugural ‘State of investments in Iraq’ report highlights Iraq’s growing startup ecosystem, detailing the results of surveys and roundtables with founders and investors. Summary - The many faces of informal enterprise
This IMD research article discusses informal enterprises, highlighting their significant economic contributions while operating outside formal regulations. It addresses the challenges of growth, lack of social protections, and suggests policy frameworks to support their development. - Unlocking Mexico’s economic potential through innovation and entrepreneurship
This World Bank transition policy note sets out short-term policy actions that the incoming Mexican government can undertake to boost firm innovation and impactful entrepreneurship in Mexico. - Igniting innovation
This Onward think tank report sets out how tUK innovation is hindered by under-resourced, overstretched regulators. It calls for regulatory reforms such as government powers to overrule regulators, sunset clauses for emerging tech regulations, and expanded fast-track approvals to unlock growth.
Comment and analysis
- The intelligence age (Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI)
- France finally has a new government. What does it mean for startups? (Daphne Leprince-Ringuet, reporter, Sifted)
- We need to accelerate development to breakneck speed (Claver Gatete, executive secretary, Economic Commission for Africa)
- How new ISO/UNDP guidelines will help businesses achieve SDGs (Sergio Mujica, secretary general, International Organization for Standardization)
- The rise of GenAI: How the U.S. dominates and what other countries can do to catch up (Forrest Wright, research assessment lead, Startup Genome)
- Chips acts go global (Christopher Cytera, non-resident senior fellow, Center for European Policy Analysis and Sara Oversteyns, student, University of St Andrews)
- The national venture capital fund is the last thing that startups need in Tanzania (Amne Suedi, founder and managing director, Shikani Group)
- Twelve tax reforms to spur (U.S.) innovation and competitiveness (Robert D Atkinson, president, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation)
Features
- Gov. Wes Moore is betting on innovation for Maryland’s economic future: ‘We’ve been lazy’ (Technical.ly)
- Nigeria will become a net exporter of tech talent: Nigerian minister Dr. Bosun Tijani (Rest of World)
- Innovation looks different in the heartland (Technical.ly)
GEN Atlas insights
The GEN Atlas is the world’s largest entrepreneurship policy compendium, featuring over 400 case studies from 70 countries. Using these case studies, we publish Country Deep Dives examining the policies underpinning countries’ entrepreneurial success, Policy Deep Dives comparing different countries’ approaches to common policy challenges, and Atlas Spotlights highlighting the best examples of policies under a broad theme. Recent highlights:
- Policy deep dives: Employee share schemes | Startup visas | Youth entrepreneurship | Supporting ethnic minority entrepreneurs
- Country deep dives: South Africa | France | The Netherlands | Australia | Spain
- Atlas spotlights: Finance
To suggest content for inclusion in future editions of 'The Startup State', please email matt@genglobal.org.
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