Businesses are the building blocks of modern society. Not only are they a major part of the economy, but they also promote creativity. This is why everyone should know how important they are.

The Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) was created exactly for that reason. It aims to expose people to these benefits through various creative activities occurring worldwide during one week of the year.

It is a celebration of business and creativity which motivates people to work on their potential ideas. This event had a massive launch in 2014. It was dubbed as The world’s largest campaign to promote entrepreneurship.

These events can be seen as a series of challenges to provoke your inner entrepreneur. In addition, successful entrepreneurs get to share their experiences to inspire others.

Before we can get into details about the global entrepreneurship week, let’s look at the organisation behind it, the Global Entrepreneurship Network.

Global Entrepreneurship featured image

Founded in 2007, Global Entrepreneurship Week has become the world’s largest celebration of innovators and job creators who launch startups that bring ideas to life. Occurring each November, it engages millions across 180 countries in over 35,000 events and activities to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs.

The goal of Global Entrepreneurship Week is to create accessible opportunities for people to connect, gain insights, and take action on their entrepreneurial goals. Attendees can join workshops, competitions, networking events, panels, and more catered to their experience level and interests. From startup veterans to aspiring founders, the week aims to motivate and empower.

Government agencies, corporate sponsors, universities, accelerators, and media partners collaborate each year to produce events aligned with the initiative’s vision – to create vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems that nurture new ideas. For businesses, it presents a valuable chance to give back and get involved.

This guide will explore how your company can make the most of Global Entrepreneurship Week through event planning, promotion, and measurement of impact. Join the millions globally who are turning ideas into reality.

Definition of Entrepreneurship All You Need to Know

Global Entrepreneurship Network

The Global Entrepreneurship Network started life as one of the earliest web hosting and ecommerce solutions on the internet. The Network was founded by Thomas Heimann in 1994.

Believing in the power of the Internet in online marketing and getting information across distance barriers. He wished to establish his online presence; however, most options were incredibly expensive.

Consequently, he decided to start his solution for hosting e-commerce businesses.

Now, let us get familiar with another creation of his.

Planning Impactful Activities for Global Entrepreneurship Week:

Brainstorming Event Ideas:

  • Host workshops relevant to your expertise – social media marketing, fundraising, etc.
  • Organize a startup pitch competition with prizes and judges from your community.
  • Facilitate networking events, panels, and inspirational speaker sessions.
  • Arrange office tours or open house events at your startup.
  • Sponsor a co-working day for entrepreneurs to collaborate.
  • Support student events at local universities focused on entrepreneurship.

Finding Potential Partners:

  • Connect with small business sponsors to provide resources, judges, mentors, and promotional support.
  • Collaborate with startup incubators or accelerators to co-host events.
  • Contact local economic development agencies and chambers of commerce to get involved.
  • Utilize existing entrepreneurial communities and groups to promote activities.

Handling Logistics:

  • Book event venues based on estimated attendance and resources needed.
  • Hire vendors for catering, A/V equipment, signage, and supplies.
  • Recruit staffing for registration, setup, photography/video, and volunteers.
  • Register your event via the Global Entrepreneurship Week website.

Promoting your Involvement with Global Entrepreneurship Week:

Pitching Media:

  • Contact local business publications, radio stations, and TV news with event press releases and story pitches.
  • Highlight unique elements like competitions, high-profile speakers, or tie-ins to a hot industry.
  • Offer editorial previews of your event and interviews with organizers.

Leveraging Social Media:

  • Share event details across your startup’s social accounts leading up to the week.
  • Post video teasers, speaker spotlights, and registration links.
  • Ask partners to help amplify your content.
  • Share live coverage, photos, and attendee testimonials as the event occurs.

Tie-ins and Giveaways:

  • Run ticket giveaways and contests to drive registrations.
  • Offer special discounts or perks for participating startups.
  • Hand out branded swag – t-shirts, pens, and stickers to promote your involvement.

The key is generating excitement both in advance of and during your event through media, social channels, and attractive offers.

Global Entrepreneurship Week

The Global Entrepreneurship Week aims to spark a love of entrepreneurship in younger people. This event occurs simultaneously in almost every continent. Currently, 125 countries participate in the global entrepreneurship week to achieve various goals.

This is done through cooperation with host organizations in each country to organize these events. The event starts on the second Monday in November.

Global Entrepreneurship Week Logo
Global Entrepreneurship Week spans over 100 countries. Image credit: PSU.edu

What Does Global Entrepreneurship Week Teach?

Global Entrepreneurship Week is focused on imparting a range of core skills and attitudes to young people. After all, the goal is to create the next generation of innovative entrepreneurs. So, what does this involve?

In other words, what makes a great entrepreneur?

Successful entrepreneurs are essentially responsible for all elements of growing a business. This means that entrepreneurs have to be resilient and adaptable above all else. This is a high-pressure endeavour, so entrepreneurs can’t crack under pressure.

Additionally, one of the biggest challenges for any entrepreneur is finding new opportunities.

The first element of this is coming up with the right entrepreneurial ideas. Then, the next step is to use soft skills to find customers and clients. This requires determination, communication and organisation above all else.

Definition of entrepreneurship infographic
Entrepreneurship often means taking care of all business functions by yourself. Image credit: AmazonAWS

How Does Global Entrepreneurship Week Teach These Skills?

So, how does Global Entrepreneurship Week help to promote these skills? As a massive international event, GEN has a diverse range of events worldwide. However, the majority of these fall into a handful of categories.

Let’s take a look at each of these in turn.

Networking Events

As an entrepreneur, many of your idea’s success relies on presenting it to the right people. It is always important to keep a busy contact list. Networking events aim to help like-minded individuals meet.

This is a valuable opportunity for individuals trying to enter the business world, exactly what Global Entrepreneurship Week aims to do.

Through meeting people who have similar ideas, it makes way for the possibility of partnerships or cooperation between those individuals.

Furthermore, if you attend these events, you will have the valuable opportunity of meeting some of your local business success to learn from their experiences.

Workshops

This is another great type of event, which is very informative. Workshops are like smaller-scale lectures where the audience interacts with the speaker. These are incredibly useful when convincing your audience about your experiences and decisions.

These workshops can be thought of as an entrepreneur boot camp.

The attendees learn various lessons about launching a business. You can learn various useful strategies regarding how to improve on your initial idea, how to estimate its viability and how to obtain investors.

Presentations and Question Sessions

These events are aimed at highly successful entrepreneurs, where a large audience is expected.

It is usually a lecture given by an owner of an incredibly successful business. Afterwards, there is usually a question and answer session where the audience may ask questions about the discussed topic.

Now that we know the available events during Global Entrepreneurship Week let’s look at some previous events.

10 Entrepreneurship Ideas – Business Ideas

Measuring the impact of your Global Entrepreneurship Week events:

Setting Goals:

  • Attendee numbers – a target for signups and actual turnout.
  • Social media – followers gained, content reach, engagement.
  • Media hits – aim for several media stories and interview opportunities.
  • Leads captured – emails, signups to your services or platform.

Tracking Metrics:

  • Monitor event registration and attendance in real time.
  • Use social media analytics to track reach and engagement.
  • Record media mentions and coverage secured.
  • Collect lead contact info through sign-up forms.

Conducting Surveys:

  • Poll attendees on satisfaction, key learnings, and feedback.
  • Ask partners and sponsors for testimonials on the event.
  • Follow up via email for additional thoughts on the post-event survey.

Analyze data to identify successes and areas for improvement and quantify your event’s impact. Measure against your predefined goals.

Previous Global Entrepreneurship Events

These are some of the most successful events in the history of Global Entrepreneurship Week. These give the attendee valuable tips and motivation to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams.

Inspiring Women to Make It Happen

Women Entrepreneurship: The Power of She

This was a meetup on Women’s Entrepreneurship Day that aimed to celebrate women entrepreneurs. This event contained some examples of female business success. These UK-based women were able to transform their idea into a successful business.

Women entrepreneur challenges
Training and support are some of the biggest challenges facing female entrepreneurs. Image credit: ResearchGate

They were able to convince investors of the viability of their idea and were willing to take the risk. This event aimed to prove that women can play a major role in the business as entrepreneurs, as was proven by the various examples attending like:

Roxy Vickerman of SOAK Shakes & Co.

Roxy and Emma shared a love for diner-style milkshakes. They saw a gap in their market for such drinks and thus began their vision for creating and selling these drinks in various shops across the UK.

They created a healthier drink that relied less on chemicals, which captured the public’s admiration. Now, it is unlikely to find a shop that does not have its drink available.

Sudha Kheterpal of Shake Your Power

Sudha Kheterpal is a British-Indian musician who had great ideas regarding clean energy. Her company has created Spark, which is a percussion-like device that generates electricity out of the supplied kinetic energy.

In addition, it also generates power from solar energy. This device is sold as kits that you have to assemble yourself. This provides a great lesson for children and adults alike regarding renewable energy and its accessibility.

Currently, the business aims for its learning kits to reach schools to raise awareness among the newer generations.

Patria-Kaye Aarons of Sweetie Confectionery

Patria is a great example of a truly ambitious entrepreneur. She chose to leave her stable job as a marketer in order to pursue her dream of creating her own candy manufacturing business.

Coming from Jamaican origins, she found a gap in Caribbean flavours in candy, and she chose to fill that gap. She struggled to transition from marketing to creating her product, but her hard work paid off in the end.

Through several networking events, she met the right people, and currently, her candy is shipped to several countries where it is an established brand.

Load Sharing 3.0 Breakfast

Load Sharing 3.0 is an event based in Cape Town, South Africa, where entrepreneurs meet up in person to share experiences. It is an event that allows all kinds of people interested in entrepreneurship to discuss their ideas, success stories and tips.

You can find all kinds of business people attending such an event, from incredibly successful entrepreneurs to aspiring ones who have just started. It is truly a great opportunity for learning, networking and motivation.

Business Gateway Workshop – Business Planning

A workshop that aimed to teach aspiring entrepreneurs the essentials of having a successful business. This workshop, in particular, revolved around the steps needed to create a plan for your business.

Starting from a simple idea, followed by creating a description of your business, and then starting the planning process. The event also highlighted some skills entrepreneurs should have to convince people when pitching their plans.

How to Guarantee Your Business Success Online

The benefits of online marketing are of no argument. This event tackled the importance of your business’s presence online.

The speaker, Martyn Brown, discussed the key elements to the success of your business online. He claims that any business, no matter the size, should work on its online brand, and he has provided the essential tips necessary to ensure your success.

Global entrepreneurship week small business marketing stats
The biggest marketing challenge for small businesses is improving their digital presence. Image credit: ShgStatic

Decades of Innovation and Entrepreneurship

2017 was the 10th anniversary of Global Entrepreneurship Week.

If you are interested in this year’s GEW, you can look up planned events near you to join in on this wonderful celebration of business.

Alternatively, suppose you have any experiences to share. In that case, it might be a good idea to sign up as an available speaker, which is a great addition to you as an entrepreneur and for your business that will gain a lot of exposure.

It is no doubt that this event provides useful insights for new and old businesses alike. It is always a good idea to attend these events as they are a true eye-opener to the available business solutions.

Global Entrepreneurship FAQ:

Q: Is there a cost to participate in Global Entrepreneurship Week?

A: Most local events are free or low-cost to attendees. Organizers typically secure sponsorships and partners to fund activities.

Q: Do I have to register my event on the Global EW website?

A: Yes, registering ensures your event will be searchable and helps track global participation. There is no fee to add your event.

Q: Can anyone host an event for Global Entrepreneurship Week?

A: Yes! Individuals, community organizations, schools, businesses, and government agencies are all encouraged to host events aligned with the initiative’s goals.

Q: When should I start planning a Global EW event?

A: Start 6-12 months prior. Popular venues book up fast. Allow time to secure partner vendors and promote effectively.

Global Entrepreneurship Conclusion:

Global Entrepreneurship Week provides unparalleled opportunities to support and participate in your local entrepreneurship ecosystem. By strategically planning events aligned with your startup’s strengths and resources, you can attract and inspire your target audience while making a broader community impact.

With smart goal-setting, promotion, and measurement practices, your hard work can result in valuable media exposure, partnership development, lead generation, and brand visibility during the world’s largest celebration of innovators.

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