The Global Entrepreneurship Network announced the four finalists for the Startup Nations Award for National Policy Leadership. The award recognizes individuals who champion broad and large-scale efforts that have a positive impact on a national ecosystem and work to advance new and young firm formation – either in their country or abroad.
The award is one of three Startup Nations Awards that will be presented at the Startup Nations Summit on Tuesday, November 21, in Tallinn, Estonia. The winner will be the third recipient of the award, which was previously received by Dr. Choi Yanghee, minister of science, ICT and future planning from South Korea, and Dr. Pichet Durongkaveroj, then the Thai Minister of Science and Technology.
The other two Startup Nations Awards are Groundbreaking Policy Thinking and Local Policy Leadership.
The Selection Committee evaluated nominations based on the following criteria:
- Clarity in the identification of the bottleneck(s) affecting the national ecosystem
- Level of innovativeness of the specific policy lever(s) or program idea(s)
- Level of personal commitment to shifting national government thinking on entrepreneurship policy
- Availability of metrics or evidence to show the impact of the policymaker’s efforts
- Extent to which it is possible to replicate efforts, adapting to other policy areas or other national ecosystems
This year, the four finalists for the National Policy Leadership Award come from four different countries and three different continents, and have contributed to their community as a startup champion through a variety of initiatives ranging from ecosystem building initiatives to tax incentives to make investing more appealing.
Below are the four finalists for the 2017 Startup Nations Award for National Policy Leadership.
Mariano Mayer
Secretary of Entrepreneurs and SMEs, Ministry of Production
Argentina
Having successfully tested entrepreneurship policy levers as intra-preneur in the Buenos Aires city government, upon assuming broader leadership as National Secretary for Entrepreneurs and SMEs, Mr. Mayer began a bold, multi-pronged strategy to revive Argentina’s entrepreneurial spirit. Mr. Mayer decisively led a concerted effort that has recently led to a new law for entrepreneurs. He formed a team of startup-savvy public officials to support a decentralized strategy for the development of entrepreneurial clubs across Argentina, among other initiatives to create lasting and sustainable change in Argentina’s entrepreneurial environment.
Juan Carlos Garavito Escobar, on behalf of iNNpulsa Colombia
General Manager, iNNpulsa Colombia
Colombia
iNNpulsa is a government agency born in 2012 with a mandate to support new and young businesses. It has since helped monitor results of ecosystem-building initiatives emanating from the public sector, and scaled initiatives that yield results for growth-oriented businesses. The ALDEA program embodies iNNpulsa’s policymaking approach of metrics-based public sector interventions, and remaining entrepreneur-centric. Aldea unearths, via a virtual platform, innovative companies and provides them with tools such as mentoring and finance, so that they can achieve their growth goals and become leading actors within their respective sectors.
Alexander De Croo
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Development Cooperation, Digital Agenda, Telecommunications and Postal Services
Belgium
Mr. De Croo’s has made significant contributions in the areas of tax incentives for investors and hiring first employees, through modern approaches to stakeholder engagement and co-creation. He led the design and implementation of policy levers across various areas, including education in digital skills as way to make entrepreneurs key drivers of Belgium’s digital revolution. Mr. De Croo made credit crowdfunding fiscally more attractive for investors willing to lend money to companies less than four years old. As a former entrepreneur himself, under his leadership, the Belgian government has also approved an ambitious and comprehensive open data strategy.
Dong Dang Huy
Deputy Minister, Ministry of Planning and Investment
Vietnam
Minister Dan Huy has managed to put entrepreneurial support high on Vietnam’s national government agenda. Building on a series of targeted policy efforts, in June 2017 Vietnam's National Assembly approved the country’s new legal framework for supporting SMEs. Mr. Dan Huy personally led the team that drafted the law. The goal of the new law is to reach one million enterprises by 2020 via two main avenues of support: a) supporting actors in the ecosystem that provide basic services across seven areas of concern to entrepreneurs, such as access to networks, access to sources of capital, and access to market. b) offering support programs, aiming for the formation of creative start-up ecosystems, among other SME-oriented objectives.