Research released today by Enterprise UK highlights the importance of green business credentials for young people, with 50% of those surveyed saying that a company or brand’s green credentials has the greatest impact on their purchasing decisions.

This survey was carried out to launch this year’s Make Your Mark Challenge, which kick-starts Global Entrepreneurship Week. Over 70,000 young people are taking part in the Make Your Mark Challenge, the UK’s largest one day enterprise competition, which this year has been designed to reflect low carbon considerations. It was launched on Monday by Dragon’s Den entrepreneur Peter Jones.

It is one of a number of activities with a low carbon theme taking place this week. Other initiatives include the launch of the Clean and Cool Mission (17 November), a competition to identify the top 20 fastest-growing companies in the UK that are working in the clean technology arena and the final of the Clean Tech Open, the world’s largest clean technology business competition taking place in San Francisco today.

Forty per cent of those surveyed believe that it is their individual actions that will have the greatest impact on tackling climate change. Additionally 20% of young people questioned said their driving force for setting up a business would be to make a positive impact on the environment. Therefore, all entrants in the competition will have to demonstrate how they’ve considered the environmental impact of their proposed business idea.

Fronted by Countdown presenter, Rachel Riley the Challenge aims to improve young people’s enterprise capabilities as students develop new and innovative business ideas in response to a brief revealed at midnight November 15; “Let local inspiration lead you to a ‘cool’ creation”.

Students will be asked to come up with profitable original business idea inspired by something local that minimizes its impact on the environment.

Rachel Riley said: “The Make Your Mark Challenge is a fantastic way to get young people interested and excited in business and becoming entrepreneurs. It is vital to inspire and develop the skill set of these future entrepreneurs as they will help to drive our economy in years to come. This year we are also making all entrants consider the environmental impact of their entries and thereby ensuring they are prepared for another of the challenges that will become ever more important to business.”

Challenge supporter Dale Vince OBE, Managing Director of Ecotricity said:  “To all young people taking the Make Your Mark Challenge, my advice is: don’t concern yourselves with how things are ’supposed to be done’, write your own rules. Every business has an impact, make yours a positive one! Identify something worth doing, where you can make a difference and use business as a tool to get something done.  The Make Your Mark Challenge can really help you with the skills and ideas to get started.”

Student teams will compete at a local and regional level before a national final on December 10, while global leaders will be locked in negotiations in Copenhagen at the UN Climate Change Conference.

The competition is designed for students aged 14-19 and is part of the Make Your Mark campaign to increase entrepreneurial behaviour among young people. Make Your Mark is run by Enterprise UK which gives people the skills, confidence and ambition to be enterprising.

Enterprise UK spokesperson, and Make Your Mark Challenge Manager Tori James commented; “This year’s Make Your Mark Challenge will inspire bold enterprising and inquisitive minds. The low carbon theme reflects what young people care about. We’re excited to see the entrepreneurial ideas that it unleashes.”

Young Entrepreneurs who attended the Kauffman Global Scholars Programme gathered for lunch at Kings Cross St Pancras’ Grand Restaurant, following the launch of Global Entrepreneurship Week in London held at the British Library yesterday. Guest speaker was Dragon’s Den entrepreneur Peter Jones, who discussed his Enterprise Academy with the young business men and women, alongside Carl Schramm CEO of the Kauffman Foundation. This was an opportunity for the young entrepreneurs to establish contacts, discuss their projects and seek advice from two visionaries.

Italy began Global Entrepreneurship week yesterday (Monday 16th November) with an inaugural event held in Pisa at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, an Italian public University with a reputation for its commitment to the innovation of technology. META is the organisation that will be hosting the events in Italy this week and is an international group dedicated to the creation and acceleration of knowledge based companies for the wealth of open, brain intensive and entrepreneurial regions. The event, organized in collaboration with Mind The Bridge, will be focused on “Research in Italy: entrepreneurship which starts from science and technology”. Marco Marinucci, Alberto Onetti and Matteo Daste from Mind The Bridge will join the event through video conferencing.

The kick-off event in Pisa was aimed to encourage not only students but also researchers, public officials and policy makers to explore innovative paths to meet the needs of modernization. With entrepreneurship in mind, some other events taking place this week in Italy include, “Face2Face: Capturing Creativity“ an activity organised by U.S. Diplomatic Mission to Italy, featuring a series of videos on the world of entrepreneurs. A Webchat will also allow students to interact with successful entrepreneurs and learn from their experience. There will also be a day-long workshop, “Start-Up Hack“, in which experienced professionals will sit down with recent graduates to discuss their theses and business plans.

Amsterdam, 16 november 2009 – Wereldwijd start vandaag de Global Entrepreneurship Week – de week die in 88 landen plaatsvindt om ondernemend gedrag onder jongeren te stimuleren. Na een inspirerende openingsspeech van staatssecretaris Jan Kees de Jager (Financiën) vond de live finale plaats van een ideeënwedstrijd, gebaseerd op de vraag hoe de ondernemende houding van kinderen tot 16 jaar gestimuleerd kan worden. Een jury van 8 kinderen en 4 deskundigen beoordeelde de ideeën en kende de prijs – een dag meelopen met zijn of haar favoriete ondernemer – toe aan Arno Bisschop, student aan de VU. Met behulp van de ideeën zal het Innovatieplatform zich buigen over de vraag hoe ondernemerschap bovenaan de lijst met carrièrekeuzes komt te staan.

Kinderen en deskundigen beoordelen finalisten van ideeënwedstrijd

In totaal hebben ruim vijftig studenten en young professionals gereageerd op de ideeënwedstrijd – uitgezet door het Innovatieplatform en gecoördineerd door Battle of Concepts. De vijf beste studenten kregen vanmorgen ieder 5 minuten om hun concept te presenteren aan de jury, bestaande uit 8 kinderen afkomstig van scholen die deelnemen aan het actieprogramma van onderwijs en ondernemen en 4 deskundigen: Wiebe Draijer, Hans de Boer, Rinke Zonneveld en Bas Welling. Gezamenlijk beoordeelden zij de concepten op eenvoud, haalbaarheid, schaalbaarheid, originaliteit en innovatie. Na intensief beraad kende de jury de prijs toe aan Arno Bisschop.

Over de Global Entrepreneurship Week

Van 16 tot en met 22 november vinden er in Nederland meer dan 130 activiteiten plaats om jongeren in contact te brengen met ondernemen. De Global Entrepreneurship Week vindt plaats in Nederland en 88 andere landen en staat bol van workshops, lezingen en trainingen waar jongeren hun ondernemersskills kunnen ontwikkelen.

Fotograaf: Pieter Glerum

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.

Iceland kicked off its Global Entrepreneurship Week events today, as leaders from around the country took part in the celebration.

Ministers, mayors and party chairs will be on hand for an elastic wristband event. Minister of Industry Katrín Júlíusdóttir will be the first of many who will place the elastic bands on their wrists and then execute something that they’ve been meaning to do for a long time. Afterwards, they will pass it on to someone else. Each wristband project should be registered to the website athafnateygjan.is, where the process of each elastic band can be monitored.

On Nov. 17, there will be an open house at Keldnaholt, 112 Reykjavík, for those who are eager to discuss their business ideas and to be consulted on the establishment of companies—or just want to drop by for a visit.

On Nov. 19, innovators and entrepreneurs will talk about their experiences at the café Súfistinn on Laugavegur in Reykjavík. Outside the capital region, open meetings will be held in Saudárkrókur, Blönduós and Hvammstangi.

In Akureyri, the local innovation center will host events every day at the library’s Amts-café. On Nov. 19, presentations and consultancy sessions will take place at Ketilhúsid Cultural Center in Kaupvangsstraeti.

In the Westman Islands, the local Fab Lab Innovation Center will inspire inhabitants, and in Höfn there will be an osmosis experiment — osmosis power plants could be Iceland’s future in energy harnessing.

PricewaterhouseCoopers provided students from Junior Achievement Russia with an up-close look at what a “real job” is like and how the skills they learn through JA programs are put into use in the workplace. The event was designed to give young people a clearer focus for the future and help them make better informed choices about career fields.

Junior Achievement Russia’s (JA Russia) mission as a committed member of Junior Achievement Worldwide (JA Worldwide) is to educate and inspire young people to succeed in a global economy through entrepreneurial, work readiness and financial literacy programs.

Global Entrepreneurship Week UK got underway this morning with a series of keynote speakers at the British Library in London, followed by a panel discussion.

Lord Mandelson addressed the conference via video and said the UK government was committed to sustaining a business culture that supports enterprise

Delivering an address shortly after, Carl Schramm, CEO of the Kauffmann Foundation, praised the UK Prime Minister, saying “GEW would not exist without Gordon Brown’s commitment to entrepreneurship.” He also said that entrepreneurs are needed to rebirth the economy.

A panel discussion later got underway, with Peter Jones, Chairman of Enterprise UK, and Matt Brittin MD for Google UK among others.

See here for more photos from the launch.

With the sun now rising in New Zealand, Global Entrepreneurship Week has officially begun. Global Entrepreneurship Week celebrations are now starting up all over the world, launching not just individual campaigns, but a global movement that will connect approximately 4 million people in 87 countries.

Each nation has found a different way to kick off what is the culmination of months of organizing and engaging their communities. Here in the United Kingdom, where I am making my first stop, the British Library is hosting an event with Enterprise UK featuring such globally recognized leaders as Matt Brittin, UK managing director of Google; Peter Jones, entrepreneur and star of BBC’s Dragons’ Den; Jim O’Neill, head of Global Economic Research at Goldman Sachs; and, Carl Schramm, president and CEO of Kauffman Foundation. All will gather in a few hours to celebrate entrepreneurship throughout the United Kingdom and discuss its potential to grow the global economy.

Such excitement is no surprise in the UK – a public known for having a sky-high opinion of entrepreneurs. Indeed, it is estimated that one in four people are either running their own business or considering it for the future. This interest in entrepreneurship is stimulated by leaders who have put their time and efforts behind their words, especially Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who conceived the idea of Global Entrepreneurship Week with the Kauffman Foundation’s Carl Schramm, and has actively participated in activities every year. Top-level commitment to a pro-entrepreneurship culture is also shown in the government’s Enterprise Strategy, which sets out the framework for driving forward enterprise policy. Reforms to date are reflected in the country’s improving Doing Business ranking; according to the World Bank, this year the UKeconomy made it on the top 5 list for ease of doing business.

Similarly exciting launch activities around the world demonstrate the rising importance attached to entrepreneurship. Young people are one of the groups most affected by the recession, as shown by high youth unemployment rates everywhere. So, it is not surprising that this demographic is so apt to participate in events like that in New Zealand, where over 150 aspiring entrepreneurs, established business leaders and government officials are, as I upload this post, joining together for an early morning speednetworking session at the Wellington city government building that will be broadcast throughout the country. In a few hours in Brazil, young people and government officials are also coming together for a launch, with the intent of discussing sustainable entrepreneurship and specific initiatives that can support and guide this movement at the federal, state and municipal levels of government. In China, where President Obama will be for the beginning of Global Entrepreneurship Week, over 1,000 people are just about to celebrate entrepreneurship with a large-scale ceremony that will feature a number of VIPs from the Chinese government and also debut the musical drama “Forever the Moment”, which was composed and directed by undergraduate students. And in the United States, Chapman University in Orange, California, will turn into a “Times Square” of sorts as engineering students develop a way to host the “Orange Ball Drop,” counting down to midnight on the eve of the Week.

With activities planned for seven straight days, this week we will be witnessing a renewed interest in the marketplace as a place to work with ideals and ideas. Young entrepreneurs are deeply curious about the opportunities the marketplace offers to tackle the challenges facing the human race. In this new mindset, running profitable businesses and improving the world are seen as mutually reinforcing. The “post-Google”, “new media” generation has opened the doors to creativity and innovation. I hope you will join this generation in their activities in your country and support their dreams of starting revolutionizing companies.

Join me tomorrow in the Netherlands.

—

Follow Jonathan Ortmans whistle-stop tour around the world, reporting first hand on the highlights of Global Entrepreneurship Week. To receive alerts directly in your inbox, make sure you are subscribed to the Global Entrepreneurship Week newsletter.

A conference on Entrepreneurship and Innovation for Central and Eastern European Competitiveness commenced this evening in Vienna, Austria, hosted by The Business Council for International Understanding (BCIU). It will run until November 17 at the InterContinental Wien.

Around 100 entrepreneurs headquartered in Central Eastern and Southeastern Europe commenced the BCIU conference with a reception at the official residence of U.S. Ambassador William C. Eacho in Vienna. BCIU also paid tribute to U.S. statesman John C. Whitehead, BCIU Honorary Trustee, for his support of democratic forces behind the Berlin Wall as a private citizen and later as U.S. Deputy Secretary of State.

The forum brings together a cross-section of the region’s U.S. diplomats, policy makers, and established and up-and-coming entrepreneurs to discuss successful start-up sectors in Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe. The event provides a unique opportunity for entrepreneurs, senior officials and business leaders to network, share perspectives about new strategies for growth and gain access to mentoring and funding resources.

“As we celebrate Global Entrepreneurship Week 2009 with the backdrop of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, we have organized this forum to spotlight and foster entrepreneurship in the Central, Eastern European region,” said President and CEO of BCIU Peter Tichansky when he announced the conference last week.

“The transformation of this region over the past two decades demands attention as does its future. We’re very pleased to join with Global Entrepreneurship Week and the Kauffman Foundation to convene current and future leaders that are driving innovation, competitiveness and opportunity in this important region,” he continued.

Video podcasts will be available at www.unleashingideas.org/bciu