World Entrepreneurship Forum's White Paper brings entrepreneurs' recommendations to global village
The World Entrepreneurship Forum, the first global think tank dedicated to entrepreneurship creating wealth and social justice, announced today the release of its latest White Paper, focused on "The World in 2050". At a time where population is growing, ageing, global poverty increasing, and natural resources depleting, entrepreneurs from 55 countries gathered last November to bring innovative, sustainable and real-world solutions to the table. Identifying four major challenges our world will face, the White Paper focuses on key recommendations, using case studies to illustrate its proposals, and featuring its commitments for a deep, broad and quick change.
Through the World Entrepreneurship Forum, the entrepreneur is not solely a profit maker, but a person who reconciles the creation of wealth with social justice.
"We believe passionately that entrepreneurship, in all its forms, is one of the most sustainable ways we have to find enduring answers to all these challenges", said Patrick Molle, President, EMLYON Business School, and Co-President of the Forum. "Our ambition, therefore, is that the Forum should move from being a community of entrepreneurs in the world, to being at the heart of an entrepreneurial world community".
"The World Entrepreneurship Forum's vision of nurturing entrepreneurship to create wealth and sustainably grow the economy has gained global resonance. Singapore is proud to be part of this global movement. Since 2003, the Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE) has worked with various partners to create a pro-enterprise Singapore. Our efforts have paid off. Singapore has been ranked first as the world's Easiest Place to Do Business by the World Bank Report for the past five consecutive years. We look forward to hosting the first World Entrepreneurship Forum to be held in Asia later this year," said Mr Lee Yi Shyan, Minister of State for Trade & Industry and Manpower and Minister in charge of Entrepreneurship.
The White Paper is divided in four parts, each of them corresponding to one of the four main areas that the World Entrepreneurship Forum is tackling:
- Accelerating the emergence of high-growth and innovative companies, as a way to providing jobs for all, and making a significant impact on a global scale;
- Encouraging entrepreneurship at the 'base of the pyramid', because it will help eradicate poverty, secure a decent life for all, and ensure a safer life for all;
- Promoting new models of entrepreneurial cities, to address the massive urbanization move that will occur in the next forty years;
- Educating entrepreneurs for the world, throughout life from the very earliest stages of childhood, using formal and informal channels.
Each section of the White Paper provides the global context, a set of recommendations, best practices to illustrate these recommendations, and ends with a set of concrete commitments for the year to come.
Among the recommendations, the creation of a global network of high-growth incubators, the use of common retail spaces aimed at BoP entrepreneurs, a dedicated accreditation system for entrepreneurship education, or the creation of a global high-growth entrepreneurship training programme for professors.
The Executive Summary of the White Paper will be available to download for free from the World Entrepreneurship Forum's website - www.world-entrepreneurship-forum.com from Tuesday 8 February; while the exhaustive version will be distributed to decision-makers worldwide in the coming weeks.
Beyond disseminating its ideas through the White Paper, the World Entrepreneurship Forum will disseminate its entrepreneurial message through the establishment of 5 Regional Fora around the globe - the first two being launched in 2011, Singapore hosting the Regional Forum in 2012; while students representing 8 nations (Singapore, France, China, India, Argentina, Ecuador, Kenya, Indonesia) will organize Junior Fora. As Jean-Luc Decornoy, President of KPMG France says: "True impact comes when ideas discussed on the global scale become truly local. As a joint founder, we are proud to contribute to support this localization process thanks to our network of partners from all around the globe".
Their contributions will be fed into the Global Annual Event to be held from 2-5 November in Singapore. Beside these formalized meetings, members of the Forum will contribute all year long by implementing their individual commitments and studying best practices from around the world.
"We have done a lot for entrepreneurship promotion in Singapore," says Member of Parliament Inderjit Singh, "and we are willing to share our experience. Moreover, Singapore being dependent on globalization, it is of major importance to constantly benchmark best practices from all around the world. Having more than 55 countries represented is a unique opportunity".
Provided by Nanyang Technological University