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Letting Startups Lead

10 days ago the global celebration of our inventors and entrepreneurs offered a little light relief and optimism amid global headlines of economic decline, political blandness and security fears. Parts of our world may be receding, but there are far more new ways of doing things that are going to scale.

This year's Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) offered more than 41,000 events for 10 million participants in 123 countries. Global competitions, events and activities showcased plenty of talent seeking to birth game-changing firms that could not only move markets, but solve challenges and create jobs. In short, we had a glimpse of the promise of human endeavour for the benefit of all.

Take GEWs Startup Open, which received entries from start-ups in over 60 countries. Its two final winners are introducing powerful solutions to global problems. Fenugreen´s patented, all-natural material addresses the challenge of food spoilage, and Dynamo Micropower offers to supplant conventional power solutions through ultra-micro turbine architecture. The winner of the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards (GSEA), Ludwick Marishane from the University of Cape Town, in turn won a half million-dollar prize pool of cash and in-kind business services. This student's enterprise makes available products that solve real challenges in developing economies, such as DryBath, a bath substitute lotion for the whole body, which offers new possibilities for the millions of people worldwide who have no daily access to clean water.

Further examples included GEW's Cleantech Open Global Ideas Competition where BioFiltro from Chile, which commercializes a wastewater treatment system developed at the University of Chile, beat finalists from France, Denmark, the UK, Sweden, and the US to take the grand prize of $100,000.  As you can also see with the contenders in the BBC World Challenge, a new generation is using the marketplace as a way to leave their mark on the world.

Through these bright minds, technology, environmental awareness, humanitarian help and commercialisation expertise are intersecting to allow the young to do well and do 'good'. And their platform for success is the world stage no less. The predictable linear world ruled by institutions is being challenged for its cumbersome pace and being gently led to a new frontier by a cacophony of informal start-up networks across national boundaries that are porous to new ideas.

Policymakers are playing close attention. New firms are being tapped as the greatest source of new wealth for struggling economies, a powerful weapon against poverty and a potent force for innovating our way past some of the world's toughest problems.

History is full of writings about new generations with ideas and promise, but rarely in the past have we seen what is evident during Global Entrepreneurship Week - namely that its thinkers and dreamers plan to use the marketplace to bring their ideas to life with the full support of family and peers. 

Now, all eyes are on the Global Entrepreneurship Congress -- scheduled for March 12-18, 2012 in Liverpool, UK -- where already more than 120 nations involved in GEW have confirmed their best and brightest minds in the start-up space for one week of collaborative discussion on everything from smart research and public policy to building stronger start-up ecosystems. The world needs this global, open, committed generation of risk takers. The world needs more entrepreneurs.