About GEN Iceland

Iceland was among the founding wave of countries to join Global Entrepreneurship Week when it launched in 2008, participating in that inaugural 77-country campaign. The country’s entry into the GEW network quickly proved a natural fit: a nation of just over 300,000 people with a deeply embedded culture of resourcefulness and innovation, Iceland brought an outsized entrepreneurial energy to the global campaign from the outset. The timing was significant—Iceland joined GEW in the months before its catastrophic banking collapse, and in the difficult years that followed, the campaign became a vehicle for channeling public energy toward entrepreneurship as a pathway to economic recovery. 

Iceland’s earliest GEW campaigns were notable for their creativity and community reach. At the 2010 European Entrepreneurship Convention in London—a two-day gathering of 20 GEW host organizations sharing experiences and planning for the year ahead—Iceland’s representatives showcased one of the most inventive national activations on display: the ‘Activity Band’ initiative. A select number of wristbands were distributed across the country, with each recipient required to launch a GEW activity before passing the band to the next person, and each band’s journey tracked via a dedicated website. The initiative exemplified the grassroots ingenuity that characterized Iceland’s approach to GEW in these formative years. 

Iceland’s GEW campaign quickly earned international recognition for the scale of its impact relative to the country’s small population. At the Global Entrepreneurship Congress (GEC) in Dubai in 2010, Iceland received a Compass Award for Most GEW Events per Capita for the 2009 GEW cycle—a recognition that captured both the ambition of the national campaign and the remarkable density of entrepreneurial activity it had generated. GEN President Jonathan Ortmans, writing in 2010, highlighted this achievement alongside Iceland’s INSEAD world champion ranking in innovation and President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson’s leadership of an MIT Global Startup Workshop under the theme ‘Conquering the Economic Crisis with Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Green Energy.’ Iceland went on to receive the Compass Award for Most GEW Events per Capita a second time for the 2010/2011 cycle, establishing the country as a consistent leader in per-capita campaign performance within the global GEW community. 

Iceland’s GEW hosts played an active role in the wider European GEW network, with Reykjavík hosting one of the regional European GEW meetups that brought together national campaign leaders from across the continent. The country also contributed to GEN’s broader cultural programming: a short documentary, The Startup Kids, made by two young Icelandic entrepreneurs and featuring founders behind companies such as Dropbox, SoundCloud, and Vimeo, was championed by the GEW global team and organized for screenings during GEW 2012 in London, Berlin, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. An Icelandic startup was also among the 2013 GEW 50—a global selection of the 50 most innovative companies drawn from 24 countries—placing Iceland’s emerging startup community alongside those from India, Israel, Nigeria, and the United Kingdom. 

Iceland’s national leadership engaged directly with the entrepreneurship agenda that GEW helped animate. President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson was a prominent advocate, leading the MIT Global Startup Workshop in 2010 and convening entrepreneurs, financiers, government officials, and academics around innovation and green energy as tools for national recovery. His active involvement gave Iceland’s entrepreneurship movement a level of political visibility that distinguished it within the European GEW community. Thorlindur Kjartansson, Chairman of Innovit—a center for innovation and entrepreneurship—was also a key ecosystem voice, reporting that Iceland had seen a surge of entrepreneurial activity even during the turbulent years of its economic restructuring, with much of it focused on high-impact, energy-related ventures well suited to Iceland’s geothermal and renewable resources. 

Iceland has featured in GEN’s broader research work. The 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEI), released by GEN and the GEDI Institute during Global Entrepreneurship Week, ranked Iceland sixth globally with a GEI score of 73.5—one of three Nordic countries in the top ten. The report specifically cited Iceland as an emerging digital entrepreneurship leader, alongside Malaysia and the Baltic states, reflecting its standing as an innovation-driven economy with favorable conditions for high-growth startups. 

GEN maintains active relationships with key Icelandic ecosystem stakeholders. The University of Iceland serves as a primary implementing partner for AWE Iceland and channels activity through the Gróska innovation hub. The Icelandic Institute for Intelligent Machines (IIIM) participated in GEW 2011, contributing a research and technology dimension to the national campaign. Marel, one of Iceland’s leading global technology companies, has been associated with GEW activities in the country. The U.S. Embassy in Reykjavík is an ongoing institutional partner for GEW programming and women’s entrepreneurship initiatives, and the Association of Business Women in Iceland (FKA) contributes to GEN’s gender-inclusive programming across the ecosystem. 

Jonathan Ortmans, Founder and President of GEN, has visited Iceland often and followed Iceland’s entrepreneurial trajectory closely since the early years of the GEW campaign, documenting the country’s post-crisis resurgence and its recognition at the 2010 GEC in Dubai. GEN’s ongoing mission in Iceland centers on connecting the country’s founders, researchers, policymakers, and support organizations to the global entrepreneurship ecosystem—ensuring that Iceland’s record of per-capita innovation continues to be recognized and amplified on the world stage.