In 2005, the global economy was slowing in advance of what was to become the Great Recession. Credit tightened, unemployment was on the rise, and business investment declining. We may not have been looking at 1970s stagflation, but things looked bleak.
At the time, entrepreneurship was little understood. There was no policy distinction between new business and small business and governments generally did not report rates of new firm formation or entrepreneurial activity even in the United States – an economy built by pioneers and risk takers.
In Kansas City, right in the middle of the United States, an idea was percolating that would help change all that.
Research emanating from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation began to examine the critical role that new businesses – and the entrepreneurs who start them – play in bringing forth new products and services that both make our lives easier, generate jobs and build economies. Kauffman’s work was ultimately about growing economies and how the creation of new goods and services – many of which like Uber we did not know we needed until they appeared – was driving job creation and improving lives at scale.
At the same time, more than 4,000 miles away, the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the United Kingdom was pursuing a similar course. Gordon Brown had come to realize that if Britain was to reach higher levels of economic expansion it needed more people ready to try their hand at starting a new business. Accordingly, he had established a national week-long effort called “Enterprise Week” sponsored by the U.K. Treasury that encouraged high-school level students to spend time in newly established businesses and try their hand at creating their own with initiatives like “Make it With a Tenner”.
These and more stars began to align. With the help of youth entrepreneurship initiatives around the world and a newly assembled team in Washington DC, a movement was emerging around how to bring the idea of starting a business to those who might not otherwise have seen it as a possibility in their world. At its heart was the notion that what if we could get the majority of the world to engage in new value creation, we could build a new path to combatting poverty and growing economies where more citizens benefitted.
Eager to show that entrepreneurship was more than business schools, universities like Stanford and MIT in the U.S., Erasmus in the Netherlands and the National University of Singapore were early adaptors leading by example thousands of educational institutions around the world. Community organizations and others then created campaigns set on showing more interested citizens that entrepreneurship was about conducting experiments, forming teams, collecting data and reiterating. New value creation – and jobs – would come not from incremental improvements in management of existing enterprises, but in the birth of new ones.
The movement caught fire. Celebrity entrepreneurs like Richard Branson and Russell Simmons, founder of Def Jam Records, did events and filmed videos encouraging the next generation to take the next step in their entrepreneurial journey. Other early adaptors of growth entrepreneurship outside the United States like Endeavor invested heavily in this startup renaissance and a shared belief in the capacity of individuals to improve people’s lives.
Global Entrepreneurship Week was born and spread within three years to national GEW campaigns in more than 100 countries. In some countries, like Germany, Brazil and Sri Lanka, the government agencies responsible for advancing entrepreneurial development took the lead. In others like South Africa and Turkey, entrepreneurial support organizations like Endeavor Turkey formed clusters of national organizations to catalyze activity in every community of their nation. Youth entrepreneurship organizations like JA Worldwide which would go on to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for its work, and Youth Business International signed up to lead GEW campaigns becoming national hosts of GEW campaigns.
Backed by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Global Entrepreneurship Week matured as knowledge about entrepreneurialism emerged. For example, when Kauffman research found that entrepreneurs were not all young geniuses and college dropouts and that the average age of a US born tech entrepreneur was about 39 years old. In the face of prevailing mythology about who entrepreneurs were, the idea of helping more people understand that starting a business might be a more approachable career turn than might be expected. GEW expanded its strategy and activities to ensure it was driven by more than the enthusiasm of youth.
As the focus expanded, so too did the impact vision – moving from a one-week campaign to an organization with year-round efforts dedicated to making it possible for anyone, anywhere to start and scale. The communities that celebrated GEW gave rise to the non-profit, Global Entrepreneurship Network – fueling deeper cross-border collaboration between entrepreneurs, investors, researchers, policymakers and entrepreneurial support organizations.
So what has been the impact all this activity promoting entrepreneurship?
In the United States the economy is strong. GDP rose at a 2.8% between July and September 2024 continuing a two-year stretch of strong growth and the rate of new firm formation in the United States has been increasing every year, with the number of startups in 2022 and 2023 surpassing pre-Great Recession levels.
Further, according to research from GEN supported by its partner Startup Genome, entrepreneurial success is spreading to new and exciting places with the top 100 emerging ecosystems now representing over $1.6 trillion. Crucially they are taking a larger share of funding than ever before with an increase from 13% to 19% since 2019.
These thriving ecosystems have remarkably common characteristics including:
There is no single blueprint or controlled management. Ecosystems grow organically as complex systems of relationships, trust, inspirational stories and common goals.
They empower entrepreneurs with resources for what is already working.
They are more inclusive and transparent – economies suffer when people are left out
They are contagious. They influence – and are influenced by – their neighbors.
But despite the exponential progress that we have seen over the past 15 years, now is not the time to declare ‘mission accomplished’. There is still much work to be done to democratize entrepreneurship.
People are not benefitting equally from this startup economy as historically under-represented populations and communities are being left behind. Sixty-five percent of Series A funding is concentrated in the 40 largest ecosystems and only 15% of tech founders are female – and not the majority in any of the ecosystems we’ve studied.
Further, policymakers have been losing their focus on new firm formation. While many governments moved at previously unseen speeds to launch support packages for businesses during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the recovery and more recent global headwinds have distracted many governments from further pro-entrepreneurship reforms, which risks holding back entrepreneurial growth.
As the war in Ukraine, and many other armed conflicts and natural disasters have shown, dozens of countries around the world are becoming more impoverished and global alignment has never been more important in generating a common platform where regardless of the geopolitical winds of the week, entrepreneurs can drive a sustainable economic growth that improves the lives of millions whether at home or elsewhere.
This week, GEW will be celebrated in nearly 200 countries – through 40,000 events, activities and competitions – with an estimated 10 million participants from every imaginable community and demographic group. While GEW might have hoped to sunset itself by now, in such an uncertain and polarized world, focusing on prosperity for all our communities in all nations, it has never been more important.