This November, the Global Entrepreneurship Week celebrates its tenth anniversary.
Ten years of thousands of events and competitions. Ten years of innovation and excitement. Ten years of progress towards a shared ecosystem that has empowered 50 million people to follow their instincts, unleash their idea and start and scale new businesses. Here in the UK we’ve been involved since day one and 2017 marks an exciting new chapter in our part of the story. The campaign, which this year kicks off on the 13th of November, began in the UK with an emphasis on inspiring young people to make their mark.
In 2005 the UK hosted the very first Enterprise Week and gave life to a movement that would sweep the world. In 2007 18 nations joined the UK in committing to host a simultaneous celebration of entrepreneurship each November. By 2008, host organisations in 77 countries had officially signed on—and 3 million people participated in 25,022 events and activities.
Today the GEW campaign is the centrepiece of a sophisticated and comprehensive effort to connect people and resources together to create new opportunities and power a unique, open source ecosystem platform, called the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN).
GEN engages entrepreneurs, investors, policymakers, researchers, support organizations and others collaborating to advance economic growth and innovation in more than 170 countries around the world.
This year GEW is the official launch of the GENUK – a brand new platform and group of initiatives to help the UK ecosystem take advantage of this vast network of opportunity and bring the full power of the world’s preeminent entrepreneurship community to bear in support of the UK economy.
GEN UK is geared towards collaboration and impact at scale and is designed to help better understand, connect and grow the UK’s small business ecosystem
At the most fundamental level, GENUK links entrepreneurs and the institutions which support them together. Once established, GENUK connects this unified ecosystem to an international peer community operating at the cutting edge of ecosystem development. GENUK is about creating jobs and strengthening economic stability at a global and national and community level. – More on that in a later, longer post.
This November Roughly 35,000 events and competitions will take place during #GEW2017—connecting millions of participants to potential collaborators, mentors, and even investors. Dozens of world leaders on every continent and a network of more than 15,000 partner organizations support the initiative every year – in the UK we’re expanding our Compass Partners network. Read up on our partners to get the most from the GEW campaign.
Global Entrepreneurship Week provides a perfect opportunity for UK business to expand their reach to new audiences from all parts of their ecosystem and foster connections and resources at the global level.
#GEW2017 will be November 13-19 and GEN is counting down the weeks by recognizing some of the success stories that demonstrate its impact over the past 10 years – and a focus on the efforts of our compass partners to provide a new and engaging roadmap for the UK's entrepreneurial future.