History

Since it began in the UK as Enterprise Week in 2004, Global Entrepreneurship Week has reached millions of people, inspiring them about the potential of entrepreneurship.

The week has shown that entrepreneurship is a force for good: that it can lift people out of poverty, enable people to take control of their own lives, or simply turn their passions into profit.

Global Entrepreneurship Week began life as Enterprise Week in the UK back in 2004. When news of the phenomenal success of Enterprise Week in the UK spread the globe, lots of other countries got excited about the potential of running similar initiatives in their own countries.

So in 2008, Enterprise UK and the Kauffman Foundation (the world’s largest entrepreneurship foundation based in the US) founded the very first Global Entrepreneurship Week.

In 2011, Youth Business International became the national host for Global Entrepreneurship Week in the UK. Youth Business International, through its global network, already ran the campaign in several other countries including Canada and India, and so was the perfect organisation to take over from Enterprise UK.

Since its inception, Global Entrepreneurship Week has spread to 115 countries, with nearly 24,000 organisations planning more than 37,000 activities. As part of Global Entrepreneurship Week 2011 in the UK, over 213,000 people attended 2,305 events, run by over 900 organisations.

in 2012 Global Entrepreneurship Week UK is being run in partnership with Barclays.