This year’s Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) – Singapore promises to be much bigger and exciting with a total of about 25 local partners running their own entrepreneurial activities during the week. Some notable interesting niche associations such as the Association of Malay Entrepreneurs (KESUMA), a non-profit organization that is active in promoting entrepreneurship in Singapore; nEbO, which is a club for youths by youths, created by our very own National Trade Union Congress (NTUC).

If you check out the Events Calendar, there are at least 5 activities being held daily throughout locations spread across Singapore. Ranging from the official pitches (BANSEA-NUS Enterprise Big Pitch) for growing startups, interesting youth oriented challenges (Republic Polytechnic National Pushcart Challenge 2009), workshops on innovation in the silver industry (The Silver Entrepreneur by NUS Business School), there’s even a live telecast of NUSEA’s Rainmakers event in Silicon Valley that is run by the NUS Overseas Colleges Silicon Valley students.

For anyone that has only so much energy and time to participate in 1 activity, I would recommend looking at the Global Innovation Tournament 2009 (GIT). A global problem solving competition, participants have eight days to create a solution and post it on Youtube. Last year’s problem was on the problem of non eco-friendly plastic bottles and they had some very creative submissions and prizes (such as “Happiness Award”, “Most Romantic” Award). Check out the videos here.

Looking at our neighbour Malaysia, Warisan Global, their country host seems to be hosting most of their events at Kuala Lumpur and Selangor. Malaysia is also hosting a competition, The Angles and Dragons, open to entrepreneurial ventures to 3 countries; Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. Australia’s host, Social Alchemy, categorized each day of the week (Women Entrepreneurs, Ideas@Work etc).

Notes:

Global Entrepreneurship Week: For one week, millions of young people around the world will join a growing movement of entrepreneurial people, to generate new ideas and to seek better ways of doing things. Countries across six continents are coming together to celebrate Global Entrepreneurship Week, an initiative to inspire young people to embrace innovation, imagination and creativity. To think big. To turn their ideas into reality. To make their mark.
Founded by Kauffman Foundation & Make Your Mark.