The Summit, hosted by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is a follow up to the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship called by President Barack Obama in Washington, DC, last year to explore the role new firms play in unleashing innovation, creating jobs and driving economic growth. In support of the global entrepreneurship movement, the U.S. Department of State is partnering with Global Entrepreneurship Week to institutionalize future summits and facilitate host selection and planning starting in November 2012.

“We are fully aware that the seed of innovation, change, technology and science does not rest in the United States alone,” said Vice President Biden during his remarks. “And starting next year, the Global Entrepreneurship Summit will partner with the Kauffman Foundation and Global Entrepreneurship Week, the world’s largest celebration of business innovation to expand the reach of this summit in the years to come.”

The 2012 Global Entrepreneurship Summit will be hosted by the United Arab Emirates during Global Entrepreneurship Week which takes place next year from November 12 – 18.

The Vice President used the opportunity to reinforce President Obama’s mission of jump-starting the global entrepreneurial community in an effort to spur economic growth—a mission that coincides closely with the work of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the founder of Global Entrepreneurship Week.

“The Kauffman Foundation is honored to play a role in helping to build networks of entrepreneurs and promote education worldwide,” said Carl Schramm, president and CEO of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. “We are fully committed to bringing creative minds from all cultures together to strengthen education and spur job growth.”

The Kauffman Foundation, the world’s largest organization dedicated to entrepreneurship, aims to connect people through initiatives like Global Entrepreneurship Week that foster the creation and expansion of entrepreneurial ecosystems.

GEW is an annual, week-long celebration that drives awareness of the positive impact of entrepreneurship while providing tools and resources to existing entrepreneurs to help them grow their enterprises. Now in its fourth year, GEW recently brought together 10 million people from 123 countries through an estimated 40,000 events throughout the world.

Following are highlights of GEW 2011 (Nov. 14-20), which included the creation and growth of new firms on five continents:

• Startup Open: Two new US firms, Fenugreen & Dynamo Micropower, were named the most promising startups launched between GEW 2010 and GEW 2011 while a list of the top 50 also included entries from Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Phillipines, Portugal and Serbia.
• Global Startup Battle: Hong Kong’s Awesome Ship, a service to track the shipment of packages across all courier services, took the top prize as the best startup to emerge from 68 Startup Weekend events held during GEW.
• Global Student Entrepreneur Awards: Ludwick Marishane, a senior at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, came out on top of the GSEA for Headboy Industries and his collection of products including DryBath, a cleaning solution for the millions of people worldwide who have no daily access to clean water.
• Unleashing IdEA: The importance of diaspora and transnational entrepreneurship—through the International Diaspora Engagement Alliance—were the focus of a launch event in Washington, DC, hosted by the Inter-American Development Bank, the U.S. State Department, Univision and the Kauffman Foundation.
• Cleantech Open Global Ideas Competition: BioFiltro of Chile took the top spot in the Cleantech Global Ideas Competition, edging out national winners from 23 countries.
• Meet the Dragons: Tobias Modjesch of Germany won the finale of the European entrepreneurship competition with YOUCOOK, a company with healthy and fresh ready-to-eat meals.
• Your Big Year: 60,000+ contestants were narrowed down to 111 finalists who will compete during the Global Entrepreneurship Congress in March 2012 for a free, year-long trip around the world.

To view a clip of Vice President Joseph Biden’s speech at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, visitunleashingideas.org/ges2012.

For further information on the US Department of State, Office of Global Partnerships, visit state.gov/s/partnerships.

Global Entrepreneurship Week

During one week each November, thousands of activities around the world inspire millions to engage in entrepreneurial action while connecting them to potential mentors, collaborators and investors. In three short years, Global Entrepreneurship Week has expanded to more than 120 countries—empowering nearly 20 million people through 95,000 activities. Powered by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the initiative is supported by dozens of world leaders and a growing network of 25,000 partner organizations. For more information, visit unleashingideas.org, and follow @unleashingideas on Twitter.

Kauffman Foundation

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is a private nonpartisan foundation that works to harness the power of entrepreneurship and innovation to grow economies and improve human welfare. Through its research and other initiatives, the Kauffman Foundation aims to open young people's eyes to the possibility of entrepreneurship, promote entrepreneurship education, raise awareness of entrepreneurship-friendly policies, and find alternative pathways for the commercialization of new knowledge and technologies. In addition, the Foundation focuses on initiatives in the Kansas City region to advance students’ math and science skills, and improve the educational achievement of urban students, including the Ewing Marion Kauffman School, a college preparatory charter school for middle and high school students set to open in 2011. Founded by late entrepreneur and philanthropist Ewing Marion Kauffman, the Foundation is based in Kansas City, Mo. and has approximately $2 billion in assets. For more information, visit kauffman.org, and follow the Foundation on Twitter at @kauffmanfdn and Facebook.

Contacts

For information, video b-roll and interviews:

Kauffman Foundation

Barbara Pruitt, 816-932-1288

bpruitt@kauffman.org

or

M Booth & Associates

Sal Della Monica, 212-481-7000

sald@mbooth.com