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.
GEN community news
- The Global Entrepreneurship Network and Alibaba.com have joined forces to open applications for CoCreate Pitch, the world's leading product-driven startup competition. Learn more | Apply now | View the digital media toolkit and create co-branded promotional graphics
- GEN Botswana managing director Mooketsi Bennedict Tekere speaks to Startup Economist author Paul O'Brien to discuss Botswana's 'startup paradox' (Startup Economist)
News
- The White House has published The American AI Action Plan, a package of initiatives and policy recommendations which aim to 'achieve global dominance in AI'. The plan features three pillars: accelerating innovation, building out AI infrastructure, and leading in international AI diplomacy and security (Summary from Stanford University HAI)
- Kazakhstan has introduced a unified register of state support measures for entrepreneurship. The list of more than 100 financial, propert and non-financial support instruments aims to provide the private business community with comprehensive and reliable updated information on support available (Morgan Lewis)
- Kyrgyzstan has opened applications for a new 'Registry of Reliable Entrepreneurs', aimed at promoting transparent and responsible business practices. Companies listed in the registry will receive a range of incentives and benefits from the state (The Times of Central Asia)
- Switzerland has relaunched its SECO Startup Fund with new management and a commitment of CHF 5m ($5.4m) for high-growth and impact-driven startups with Swiss ties in emerging markets. Since its launch in 1997, the fund has invested $55.2m in more than 120 countries (Impact Investor)
Comment and analysis
- Algeria's startup playbook puts sub-Saharan policies to shame (Launch Base Africa)
- Time to supercharge Europe's innovation ecosystem (Klaus Hommels, chair, and Fiona Murray, vice chair, NATO Innovation Fund)
- IPOs are not an act of patriotism: It's time to stop chastising European founders who choose to list in the US (Fergal Mullen, co-founder, Highland Europe - free registration required to read)
- Why traditional VC is failing deep tech - and what can fix it (Nikolay Shestak, partner, Zubr Capital)
- Japan and South Korea can show governments how to compete with China and U.S. (Robyn Klinger-Vidra, vice dean, global engagement and associate professor in political economy and entrepreneurship, King's College London)
- Unleashing the AI jobs revolution in Africa (Samuel Alemayehu, chairman, Cambridge Industries)
- The UK should learn from Trump on AI and copyright (Ayesha Bhatti, head of digital policy, EU and EU, Center for Data Innovation, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation)
- Entrepreneurship: The illegal move economics can't explain (Paul O'Brien, author, Startup Economist)
Features
- Demo day, then decay: The reality of Africa's makeshift startup accelerators (Launch Base Africa)
- From service to startups: Veterans embrace a new mission (Walton Family Foundation)
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.
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The opinions expressed in the articles above are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the Global Entrepreneurship Network.