I have been in Athens this weekend for the opening event of the GEW 2014 campaign, Disrupt Startup ScaleUP. From the moment I arrived, I have been shown that the ethos of Greek youth is not the mindset of “the country that has suffered badly throughout the global financial crisis” but rather the country that can innovate its way out of its economic woes and onto the global stage.
In case you didn’t catch the first part of the two-day livestream of the Disrupt Startup ScaleUP event on www.gew.co or www.disrupt2014.com, here is what you missed.
It has been a true festival of entrepreneurship featuring the International Finals of GEW’s new “Future Agro Challenge”, and the regional finals of “Get In the Ring” the “Creative Business Cup” and “Cleantech Open Ideas” with prominent judges and speakers like Scott Halford, Emmy Award winning writer and producer, Larry Sanger co-founder of Wikipedia and Nanxi Liu founder of Enplug, among others.
The global winner of the Future Agro Challenge today was Bermuda Aerial Media. Greece will be sending Nannuka to the Get In the Ring finals in Copenhagen and Myetutor to the Creative Business Cup finals in Copenhagen both later this week.
Bob Dorf, who delighted the crowds at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress last March in Moscow, did an awesome job in challenging everyone to bring more honest discipline to the validation of their ideas with a keynote and master class on customer development. You can learn more from Dorf through the Amazon’s #1 entrepreneurship title “The Startup Owner’s Manual”, which he co-authored with Steve Blank and which is now available in 20 languages he tells me last night.
Agtech was a hot topic at Disrupt Startup ScaleUP, with the international finals of the Global Future Agro Challenge. Can insects end world hunger? According to Gabriel Mott, CEO of Aspire Grupo Alimentario (AGA, Mexico), they sure can. And he challenged the ten Agro Challenge finalists from around the world, along with Dorf, Aris Kefalogiannis founder and CEO of Gaea, Evy Passa, senior director, National Bank of Greece and Petros Kokkalis co-founder at Aephoria.net.
While agtech had the limelight being a global final with finalist entrepreneurs from across the world, other fields to disrupt were very well represented including health care with the “Health Innovation Project” national competition, for example.
Events will continue throughout the week here in Greece, including a special celebration of women in entrepreneurship. The Greek women in entrepreneurship event in November will offer inspiration and a unique learning opportunity through the knowledge sharing model called “Knowledge Shots©”. Prominent keynote speakers include: Vasso Kollia, secretary general for gender equality, Ministry of Interior,Katerina Savvaidou, public revenues general secretary, Ministry of Finance, Maria Bakodimou, journalist & TV presenter, and Milaidi Stoumpou, Microsoft Hellas.
GEW Board member and the women in entrepreneurship ambassador for Greece Olga Stavropoulou is also putting together a Videoland where a ‘world’ of videos will be uploaded so as to offer practical knowledge to women entrepreneurs, inspire women to become entrepreneurs, and highlight women-owned businesses from all over the country. Stay tuned as this idea will launch on Wednesday but live well beyond.
Kudos to Michalis Stangos and Carla Tanas, co-founders of Industry Disruptors-Game Changers, and Andreas Stefanidis, president of OESYNE (Federation of Hellenic Associations of Young Entrepreneurs), for gathering so many top entrepreneurs in Athens. It is largely their efforts that have made "startup skills" a new strong pillar of the country’s ecosystem.
While Greece is clearly now plugged in and committed to translating this strength into high-growth new businesses, institutional-level challenges remain the biggest hurdles. As the Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEI) will report, Greece’s notorious bureaucracy constitutes a real hindrance to the country’s entrepreneurial potential. You can download the report starting Monday here.
Will the government respond to this bottom-up pent up energy and help fight institutional malaise? The Mayor of Athens hosted a welcome reception I attended along with Ministers and entrepreneurs. We talked about how the downward spiral appears to have bottomed out and how he is committed to convincing other policymakers through the election here and beyond that they have a chance to build economic resilience through entrepreneurship. We hope GEW helps reach more of the public at large and helps shake up the nation into developing new startup communities that provides a renewed human spirit, committed to long-term value creation for society.
From this economy that needs entrepreneurs badly, I declare GEW officially open and hope that the clear passion and commitment of local entrepreneurs here is contagious and spreads far out into island communities in Aegean. Unleash your ideas!