notes from Toronto
July 1st, 2010 by PeterI was invited to the G20 Young Entrepreneurs Summit in Toronto recently and wanted to post a note about my experience.
The aim of the two-day Summit was to impact the G20 by working on a declaration representing the voice of 20 countries to maximize the economic potential of young entrepreneurs in their respective economies.
The Summit was one of only three official events recognised at the G20 and the communiqué we finalised, containing the declarations, was presented to those leading discussion at the G20.
UK delegates were there to help develop the recommendations and ensure that our own experiences and contribution to youth entrepreneurship could be recognised. We saw the Summit as a great opportunity to secure the role of youth entrepreneurship in the rebuilding of our economy and to ensure that the UK had a leadership role at the heart of future international action.
The UK’s delegation included a President (Alex Mitchell, Institute of Directors), a Sherpa (me) and three young entrepreneurs:
- Philip Kerr, the Managing Director of Innovas Consulting Ltd – a research company that helps national and regional government formulate and evaluate policy. Their product Enterprise Catalyst provides an innovative way to evlaute the impact of enterprise education. Philip is an Enterprise UK ambassador in the North West.
- Nathaniel Peat, the entrepreneur behind award winning business, The Safety Box. Nathananiel was the winner of the 2009 Enterprising Young Brits competition and an Enterprise UK ambassador. In 2009 he appeared on the BBC’s The Last Millionaire.
- Waqas Baggia, is an award winning entrepreneur and co-founder of Kreative Iron, a digital media company based in the West Midlands that provides graphics & web design, animation, and game development.
Over two days, we managed to finalise and sign the official communiqué from the Summit and present it to business leaders and Canadian Ministers. The communiqué is available online here but in brief it urges action in five areas:
- Access to funding: Governments therefore should support alternative mechanisms and institutions that provide young entrepreneurs with the capital they need to start and grow their businesses.
- Coordinated support: Governments should encourage greater collaboration and cooperation among organizations across the public, private and non-profit sectors, both within our countries and across international boundaries.
- Entrepreneurship culture: Examples of entrepreneurs who have overcome these and other challenges are role models that can serve as powerful teachers and we encourage our governments to find ways to share these positive examples.
- Regulation and taxation: Governments should reduce the administrative burden for early-stage businesses founded by young entrepreneurs and enact tax measures that will encourage their growth.
- Education and training: Governments should encourage entrepreneurial education that value real life experiences – in our schools, colleges and universities and through non-traditional, community-based means.
The summit confirmed what is easy to forget. That we have a great history of enterprise initiatives in the UK. The scale and impact of Global Entrepreneurship Week, Make Your Mark with a Tenner, the Virgin Media Pioneer programme, and lots more, are always greeted with immense excitement from other countries. We should be proud that people are so interested in the schemes, our reputation and impact.
It is also clear that there are amazing things happening in other countries. These include Canada’s mentoring programme (by CYBF) and microcredit initiative (by Impact – think MYM10 but $100 over 10 days instead). The Entrepreneurs Organization’s Global Student Enterprise Awards and EO24 idea (events around the world over 24 hours as part of GEW). India are doing amazing things with microcredit and marginalised groups including a 200k rupee investment for entrepreneurs from banks; Japan and Russia both trying to address the fact that entrepreneurship has not been a big part of society for a long time with Russia for example training professors in entrepreneurship to get into universities; Saudi Arabia looking at the role of family learning in promoting entrepreneurship and have had over 100k applications for enterprise loans; Australia is building networks and mentoring schemes; Spain is challenging the reputation of entrepreneurs as thieves! The EU has lots of activity through the Erasmus programme. Brazil has created entrepreneurial mayors in cities and is aiming to start enterprise education at 7; France has invented a tax status for ‘autopreneurs’ as a step just before self-employment; Turkey has an Entrepreneurs Academy for MBA and Masters students.
I’m proud that the UK had a strong influence on the Summit and the final communiqué. I think we helped it be more specific on key areas, reflect more urgency and focus on the realities of being an entrepreneur. As part of our “country briefing” session, the UK delegates were joined by Tom Bewick, Chief Executive of Enterprise UK and Andrew Fiddaman, Managing Director of Youth Business International (and thoroughly nice chap). We came up with interesting ideas around the five areas that could be implemented.
There was also a lot of Tweeting! You can read an interesting account of the Tweeting from the event here
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