L to R: Dutch Secretary of the Ministry of Finance, Jan Kees de Jagerhan, and Jonathan Ortmans of PDE during Global Entrepreneurship Week (photo courtesy of Pieter Glerum)

Today, I am in the Netherlands, a country where several actors in the economy are doing their part to unlock entrepreneurship. When I met here with Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende in 2007, entrepreneurial activity in the Netherlands had stalled and policymakers, educators, investors and corporations began to work to counter that trend. Since then, universities have achieved a lot of progress in reconfiguring themselves as engines of economic growth.

The Netherlands is now internationally known as a country with entrepreneurial universities. For example, Erasmus University in Rotterdam has implemented a new education curriculum that trains students in entrepreneurship, an initiative similar to the Kauffman Campuses in the U.S.  The University of Amsterdam in turn established the Amsterdam Center for Entrepreneurship (ACE) to stimulate an entrepreneurial climate in the Netherlands by focusing on two core activities: research and education.   All the university entrepreneurship centers are involved in Global Entrepreneurship Week.

Students are eager in the Netherlands and clearly take a global view. One example we are seeing this week is at Wageningen University, where with the University of Wisconsin students will share their collective research on sustainable entrepreneurship and start-ups in developing countries. Through an Entrepreneurial Bootcamp, 25 Ph.D. students from the two schools are here right now, teaming up to learn and develop basic start-up skills, and then translate that knowledge into a business case supported by theoretical lectures presented this week on important entrepreneurial issues. In addition, an Entrepreneurial Forum has transformed the halls of campus buildings into an interactive demonstration site for sustainable Wageningen technologies that have been, will be, or can be developed into commercial products. It has become a place where researchers, students and entrepreneurs can meet and learn from one another.

In addition to these university activities, today I attended an event featuring a debate on the theme “the free economy, how can you add value to your company.” It was a lively discussion (in English) between a number of leading entrepreneurs in the region, including Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Andrew Keen, Martjin Aslander and Robert Gaal.

I witnessed the Battle of Concepts, where young people answered the question, “How can the entrepreneurial attitude of children under 16 years are encouraged?” Today was the final round of this competition, with the top five finalists giving a two-minute pitch of their idea.  All of the top five entries received a financial prize with the top prize going to Lerrie Grooten whose “Make Some Money” earned praise from judges because it required kids to make a profit in just 2 hours even though they had a week to plan how they would invest their 5 Euros.

My favorite and the one that received most questions from the young kids present, was Arro Bishop’s idea of getting a well known Dutch children’s author such as Carny Slee to write a children’s book that made as much a hero of an entrepreneur as fireman.  Of course having young toddlers obsessed with books at home I am biased!

The young entrepreneurs participating in these activities promise to reignite job and GDP growth in the Netherlands, with their enthusiasm for developing better ways of doing things. This is needed in the Netherlands today. While the pace of job growth reached a 10-year high in 2007, economic growth fell sharply (from 3.6% in 2007 to an estimated 2%) in 2008, due to the world financial crisis. However, the Netherlands has a deep understanding of entrepreneurship and is the home of many legends in the field such as Dr. BW.M. Twaalfhoven and his European Forum for Entrepreneurship Research.  Bert has led the deepening of Europe’s understanding of entrepreneurs and deserves much credit for the highly educated people here I am seeing pursuing their entrepreneurial dreams and helping their economy rebound.

Join me tomorrow in Ghana where I will be joined by Ghana’s President.

Jonathan Ortmans is the President of Global Entrepreneurship Week and is based in Washington D.C.