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Kenny Ewan; Youth Essay CompetitionEEPA; TEDTalks
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European SME Week

Welcome to the June edition of the SME Week newsletter! 

This month is a busy one as we continue to gear up for SME Week this November. June sees the closure of all national European Enterprise Promotion Awards (EEPA) competitions in time for the European closing date of 1 July. Find out if you still have a chance to enter and win one of the prestigious European awards by searching the deadlines in the article below. Also, meet Kenny, our new Entrepreneur in Residence, and enter or promote our youth essay competition.

See you next month!

Meet June’s Entrepreneur in Residence: 

Kenny Ewan from WeFarm.org

Kenny Ewan is the CEO and Founder of WeFarm, a free peer-to-peer service that enables smallholder farmers to share information via SMS, without the internet and without having to leave their farm. Farmers can ask questions on farming and receive crowd-sourced answers from other farmers around the world in minutes. As part of his duties, Kenny leads the overall strategic direction of WeFarm and oversees the day-to-day activities of the business.

In his series of columns as Entrepreneur in Residence, he will discuss SME issues including fundraising, collaboration and scaling up, among other topics.

Read his first post here >>

Catch up on last month’s Entrepreneur in Residence, Nathan Farrugia’s posts here:

Are you 16-25 years old?

Tell us what the EU can do to encourage more young entrepreneurs and you could be on your way to Bratislava!

 

Do you have a bright idea about what the EU could do to help more young people become entrepreneurs? Would you like the opportunity to share your thoughts with policymakers and entrepreneurs on a European stage?

European SME Week, under the patronage of the European Commissioner for Single Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, has launched a youth essay contest aimed at 16-25 year olds across Europe.

Write an essay of no more than 2,500 words under the heading: “What can the EU do to encourage more young people to become entrepreneurs?” and you could be in with a chance of getting your voice heard on one of Europe’s most pressing economic questions.

More...

Inspire and be inspired!
Send us a photo of you and your team @ Work

  • Are you the star of your own enterprise and love what you do?
  • Do you work by yourself, or employ others and work in a team?
  • Do you want to inspire others to follow in your footsteps and chart their own entrepreneurial course?

Then we’d love to see you at work! Tweet us an image and caption at @EEPA_EU or submit through our Instagram account @promotingenterprise using the hashtag #SMEWeekWork. 

Whether you run your business from an office, a shop, or some other location, submit your photos with a short paragraph about who you are and what you do for our new feature, Enterprise @ Work.

You can also email promotingenterprise@gopacom.eu with the subject line “Enterprise @ Work” and send your image as an attachment.

Still time to make your views known on the European startup scene

Would you like to influence European startup policy? Do you have ideas on how to improve the European startup scene? Then this is your chance to have your say on the future of enterprise by taking part in a new public consultation launched by the European Commission. The information gathered will help identify possible solutions and shape new policy and/or support measures at both EU and Member State level to address startup needs throughout their life cycle. The goal is to create serial entrepreneurs who will try again when they fail, reinvest when they succeed, and support a healthy entrepreneurial ecosystem.

The consultation is open until 30 June, 2016 so don’t miss this opportunity to help shape startup policy.

Get involved>>

Join the discussion group on LinkedIn>>

On the blog…


Looking for information about scaling up your business? Check out the latest posts on the Promoting Enterprise blog to get clued up on what you need to do to reach the next stage:
 

EEPA News

Dutch national EEPA winners open Amsterdam Stock Exchange at prestigious bell ceremony

The two 2016 Dutch national EEPA winners, Agrico and De Rotterdamse Zaak, were invited to perform the prestigious bell ceremony to open the Amsterdam Stock Exchange on 13 May. The two finalists, who will now go through to the European EEPA competition to be held in Slovakia in November, said it was a great honour to be part of the opening ceremony.

The 2016 Dutch EEPA Final saw 14 initiatives battle it out for a place in the European finals. Following a preliminary round, five projects where shortlisted and invited to pitch their projects at a conference on 11 May. The high quality of pitches didn’t make things easy for the jury, but Agrico and De Rotterdamse Zaak were judged the ultimate winners.


There’s still time to enter the national competition in some countries, but only just! With the European deadline fast approaching on 1 July, many national competitions have now closed, but there are a few still open if you’re in one of these countries:

Upcoming deadlines for national competitions are:

  • France: 3 June
  • Finland: 6 June
  • United Kingdom: 10 June
  • Italy: 14 June
  • Czech Republic, Serbia: 15 June
  • Ireland: 17 June
  • Romania, Latvia: 20 June
  • Luxembourg: 24 June

So get your entries in soon to be in with a chance of being at this year’s prestigious EEPA ceremony in Bratislava in November.

EEPA National Coordinators: Send us your stories about the exciting projects you’re working with and be featured in a future edition of the newsletter!

Click here for more on EEPA >>

Event calendar

Literary inspiration from the world’s leading entrepreneurs

TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking by Chris Anderson

Chris Anderson, head of TED, reveals the inside secrets of how to give a first-class presentation. He shares his five key techniques to presentation success: Connection, Narration, Explanation, Persuasion and Revelation (plus the three to avoid). He also answers the most frequently asked questions about giving a talk, from 'What should I wear?' to 'How do I handle my nerves?'. Ted Talks is also full of presentation tips from such TED notable speakers as Sir Ken Robinson, Bill Gates, Mary Roach, Amy Cuddy, Elizabeth Gilbert, Dan Gilbert, Amanda Palmer, Matt Ridley and many more.

Fast fact

If you’re looking to discover the next elusive unicorn, then you’d do well to explore the sectors represented in the chart here, according to the Global Entrepreneurship and Development Institute: “A look at the Unicorns in the world shows that they fall into ten categories. ...Almost a quarter of the firms are in eCommerce/Marketplace. Amazon leads the pack here as well as Alibaba. The next largest segment is Internet Software and Services, Dropbox and Spotify for example. Similar to these next-generation segments is Big Data... These three segments make up about 50% of the global unicorns.”

 

Tell us your stories

We’d love to hear from you! Let us know what you’re doing in your business. Submit an article on a topic that you think would be of interest to the European enterprise community. Tell us who or what you’d like to see featured. Submit a business book or podcast review. Send us a photo of you and/or your team at work for our new “Enterprise@Work” feature, where we highlight entrepreneurs in their own domains.

Email us at promotingenterprise@gopacom.eu.

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