•Here’s a look of what’s going down
As 700 entrepreneurs and more than 300 investors gather for the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Summit, which begins tomorrow, June 22 to end on Thursday, June 24, at Stanford University, in Palo Alto, here is preview of the agenda for the event.
It will be recalled that President Barack Obama had, in July 2015, dragged the world to Nairobi, Kenya for the same Global Entrepreneurship Summit, in which Entrepreneurship+ covered extensively.
As it was last year, President Obama will host this year’s GES, which showcases the “US government’s commitment to utilise entrepreneurship as a foundational tool to build more communities around the world that are economically prosperous, secure, and globally connected,” the seventh annual event, at the Stanford University, California, the United States of America.
This year’s participants, which include 22 Nigerian entrepreneurs and investors, selected from more than 5,000 entrepreneurs from across the world, are “entrepreneurs who are harnessing technology to solve some of the world’s most intractable problems, innovators who are driving solutions for target populations such as adolescent girls and refugee communities, and others who are creating new markets and expanding industries like manufacturing, services, and energy in their countries. GES applicants illustrate the impressive potential to create enterprises that deliver positive solutions to consumers, communities, and countries, regardless of scope or scale,” according to a statement from the US Embassy.
U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Penny Pritzker adds that: “One of the principal goals of GES is to increase the opportunities available to promising entrepreneurs from around the world through access to capital and mentorship. By welcoming an unprecedented number of investors to this year’s GES, we are able to achieve this goal and showcase the talent, solutions, and opportunity that exist around the world directly to investors.”
Some important events that stand out for us at Entrepreneurship+ are: Women in Technology: Focus on Africa hosted by the LIONS@FRICA Partnership together with The African Technology Foundation, Ingressive, My Africa Is, and African Diaspora Network. This event showcases leading African women entrepreneurs and innovators, celebrates women in technology, and highlights key resources that connect and empower women in tech globally.
As US State Department puts it, “women entrepreneurs not only fuel economic growth, but also drive the innovations needed to address some of the most critical challenges the world faces.”
Hosted by Inter-American Development Bank, U.S. Small Business Administration, Blum Center for Developing Economies, innovators and entrepreneurs working in Latin American and the Caribbean will demonstrate how their solutions are improving lives and the power of being truly global at the event tagged Demand Solutions: Showcasing Latin American and Caribbean Innovation and Entrepreneurship that Improves Lives, on Wednesday, June 23.
Among other scheduled events are “Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence” which is hosted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Stanford and the “Detroit Story: Transformation through Disruptive Social, Food, and Mobility Entrepreneurship”, also hosted by the White House Detroit Federal Working Group (DFWG), the New Economy Initiative (NEI), Endeavor Detroit, and Shinola Detroit.
and then