Archive for March, 2010

Malaysia Young Entrepreneurs

Malaysian entrepreneurial spirit. MoneyTree Maybank Young Entrepreneur Startup (YES) 2′ challenge

From online student portals to theme-cafés, from travel sites customized for student needs to food delivery businesses, the ideas were both brilliant and raw; and are at a stage where ideas are bursting from the boxes unrestrained

Read more about Malaysian entrepreneur mindset here and how they compete for grants of RM 25,000

Source: malaysiantoday.com

Read Full Story: Say YES for Entrepreneurial Spirit

Social Entrepreneur Competition Asia 2010

Social Entrepreneur of the Year Competition Asia 2010 by Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship

The Social Entrepreneur of the Year was established to recognize outstanding social entrepreneurs in Asia and around the globe

The Regional Search in Asia is open to all organizations in the region, except India, Indonesia, Japan, Philippines where national competitions is already open or planned

Top 3 most important criteria are

• Innovation
• Sustainability
• Direct social impact

The Schwab Foundation will also consider the 2 criteria

• Reach and Scope
• Replicability

The Schweitzerland-based Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship is a not-for-profit, independent and neutral organization, founded in 1998

Their purpose to advance social entrepreneurship and to foster social entrepreneurs as an important catalyst for societal innovation and progress

Standard Chartered Bank Launch Women Business Resource Centre

Standard Chartered Bank to launch Women in Business Resource Centre, an online tool designed to help women entrepreneurs start and grow their own businesses

The online Resource Centre is currently available in seven languages, traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, Korean, Thai, Bahasa Indonesia, Hindi and Bengali

The online tool has  been specifically designed for women entrepreneurs, around topics such as influence and negotiation, marketing to female consumers and the right reasons for scaling up one’s business

Source: Borneo Bulletin

Read Full Story Here: Standard Chartered To Launch Website To Help Women Entrepreneurs

JCI Creative Young Entrepreneur Award 2010

Malaysia – The internationally recognised JCI CYEA Award is organised by the Malaysian Junior Chamber International Petaling Jaya and endorsed by the Ministry of Youth and Sports, Ministry of Energy Green Technology and Water and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation

The Malaysian IT Ministers says: “Creativity is the key element towards the positive transformation of a business. One just needs to have an idea and put it into practice, no matter how big or small it is”.

Source: Malaysian National News Agency

Read the full story here: Young Entrepreneurs Urged To Strive For International Recognition

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New Google Analytics Features

SME Magazine (Asia): New Google Analytics Features Increase Effectiveness and ROI. The SME and Entrepreneurship Magazine of Asia has a recent article

“Google Analytics is now more powerful, flexible and intelligent to help marketers, advertising agencies and businesses of all sizes make quicker, smarter decisions on how to get the most business value out of their online marketing campaigns and websites. We believe that more transparency, data and analysis leads to more effective marketing, from sharing content to converting sales to increasing brand engagement,” said Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar, Head of Web Analytics, Google Southeast Asia

These additional features will enhance the tool’s capability to add more power to existing capabilities and provide new flexibility to further customize and adapt Google Analytics according to the needs of marketers, advertising agencies and businesses of all sizes in Malaysia and Southeast Asia.

Read the full article here: New Google Analytics Features Increase Effectiveness and ROI

Global Entrepreneurship Week

Global Entrepreneurship Week, the world’s first-ever celebration of enterprising behaviour, comes at a time of massive economic change.

Recognising the global nature of many of the challenges we face, Global Entrepreneurship Week aims to connect enterprising young people with their counterparts all over the world, and ultimately create a global movement of entrepreneurial people.

Created by the UK’s business-led, government-backed Make Your Mark campaign and the US-based Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the first Global Entrepreneurship Week will see millions of young people participate.

Globally more than 13,000 events are taking place in 77 countries involving an estimated five million people, from Bolivia to Bulgaria and Mexico to Mozambique.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who launched Enterprise Week in the UK – the model taken for Global Entrepreneurship Week, said: “Global Entrepreneurship Week brings young people together across national borders, taking enterprise to the classroom and giving young people the confidence and self-belief not only to develop tomorrow’s big ideas but to put them into practice. “And Global Entrepreneurship Week will reach millions of young people – half a million in Britain alone, and to each one of them my challenge is this:

Believe in your ideas and make them happen. Because entrepreneurial spirit changes the world and it changes it for good. “You can be making a difference, so be bold, be imaginative, be brilliant. That’s really what this week is all about. Enjoy it.”

Carl Schramm, President and CEO of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation said: “For seven days, millions of young people around the world will be introduced to entrepreneurship and encouraged to think about how innovation can take them anywhere, no matter their location on the map. “Now more than ever it is imperative that we do everything we can to promote enterprise. As the world global economic downturn deepens, we are relying on entrepreneurial people with new thinking to lead us out of the recession.”

The President of Portugal, Prof. Aníbal Cavaco Silva said “I’m proud to associate my-self to this movement to wake-up, stimulate and mobilize, in particular young generations, the spirit of entrepreneurship, creativity and initiative.”

Government Problems when Promoting High-tech Entrepreneurship

INNOVATION & The Pitfalls of Promoting Entrepreneurship – A new book examines the challenges — and potential benefits — of government programs designed to foster entrepreneurship

Lots of governments would like to promote high-tech entrepreneurship and venture capital in their regions — but many don’t know how to do it effectively.

In his new book Boulevard of Broken Dreams: Why Public Efforts to Boost Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Have Failed — and What to Do About It (Princeton University Press, 2009) Josh Lerner, the Jacob H. Schiff Professor of Investment Banking at Harvard Business School, examines which types of policies to promote entrepreneurship and venture capital tend to work — and which don’t

Lerner supports his carefully researched analysis with numerous examples chosen from around the globe

Read a MIT Sloane Management Review By Martha E. Mangelsdorf

• The Pitfalls of Promoting Entrepreneurship

Jack Ma, Alibaba about Entrepreneurship

SME Financing – When it comes to securing financial support, entrepreneur Jack Ma, chairman and CEO of China’s Alibaba Group, has this advice for small and medium-sized enterprises: don’t rely on the government and the banks; rely instead on your family and friends

Speaking in Singapore, Ma told a regional SME conference that every country needs a financial incentive package to support the growth of SMEs because all big companies start as small businesses, adding that the SMEs of today will be tomorrow’s major companies like eBay, Google and UPS

Ma, himself, knows the pains of growing a business. In 1999, he founded the Alibaba Group, which has grown to five e-commerce companies operating business-to-business, retail, third-party online payment portals and cloud computing development services. The group employs 17,000 people in China, Japan, Korea, the UK and the US

Source: Insead

Read Full Article Here: SME financing: small businesses struggle to survive the downturn

Born to be an Entrepreneur?

Are Entrepreneurs Born? Or Made?

What do you think? Are you born an entrepreneur? Do you become one early in life? Or are entrepreneurs likely to start businesses out of hard-won expertise who then start a business around their skills and networks?

Recent research shows that entrepreneurs are not likely to come from entrepreneurial families. And not all business owners identified themselves as being entrepreneurial-minded in college. Instead, 69% started their own businesses within 10 years of working for someone else

In other words, the most likely path to entrepreneurship is the simplest one: you work for someone, become an expert in a technical area, build a network of contacts, then strike out on your own, presumably with a believe that you can solve a problem or build a better mousetrap than competitors