Entrepreneurship Week 2011 conference opens alongside events held in 118 countries


The country’s leading entrepreneurs, academics and economic experts emphasized on Monday the need to instill young talent with entrepreneurship and underpin startups as economic drivers in an era of innovation.

About 500 businesspeople, scholars and public officials joined the International Conference on Global Entrepreneurship, which was held in Seoul by the country’s five largest business organizations to mark Entrepreneurship Week 2011 ending Nov. 12.

“Korean businesspeople should exert entrepreneurial leadership more actively to overcome aggravating global economic conditions and to open up new markets abroad,” said SaKong Il, chairman of the Korea International Trade Association. 

“Their leadership will be an engine to transform Korea into an advanced economy and society of co-prosperity.”

The annual event was kicked off in 2008 initially by the Korean government to seek ways to triumph over an economic slump and revitalize the economy.

It also coincides with Global Entrepreneurship Week, the world’s biggest celebration of entrepreneurs launched by former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Carl Schramm, president and chief executive of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the world’s largest foundation devoted to entrepreneurship. Since then, the week-long event has expanded to 118 countries, engaging millions of businesspeople and startup hopefuls in seminars, competitions, lectures and other activities.

Participants include Anatole Kaletsky, the author of Capitalism 4.0 and editor-at-Large of the Times of London; Kim Sang-hun, chief executive of NHN Corp.; Kwon Yong-won, president of Kiwoom Securities Co.; Lee Dong-hyeung, co-founder of Cyworld and chief executive of NowProfile; Kim Dong-jae, a Yonsei University professor of international studies; and Knowledge Economy Minister Choi Joong-kyung.

Critics have been raising concerns that the country’s venture businesses have lost their dynamism under pressure from large corporations and that high barriers among different fields hold back technology development. When a business fails, despite promising skills and concepts, it is barely given a second chance, being branded a “failure.”

To build an environment where venture firms and small businesses continue to innovate, “entrepreneurs should always keep in mind to create jobs and give back their wealth to society,” Schramm said.

By Shin Hyon-hee (heeshin@heraldcorp.com)