For the past 24 years, GEM research has influenced policymakers’ discussions about entrepreneurship. A great current example of this took place on 3-4 July 2023 when GEM researcher Sreevas Sahasranamam co-chaired the task force on sustainability at the G20 Startup Summit in Gurugram, India.
The G20 Leaders’ Summit take places in India this September. Under the G20, a first-of-its-kind official engagement group called Startup20 has been initiated by the Indian presidency of the G20 2023. It acts as a dialogue forum with the global startup ecosystem stakeholders and intends to raise the macroeconomic concerns and challenges faced by entrepreneurs with G20 leaders.
The highlight of the event was the unveiling of a policy communique on the startup ecosystem for G20 nations, which was done by all the task force chairs from different countries in the presence of Piyush Goyal, India Minister for Commerce and Industry, among others. As a background document to the communique, a policy paper on sustainability and entrepreneurship was also developed and released during the Summit. This paper features insights from the GEM 2022/2023 Global Report. A brief summary of the policy communique will be handed over to the G20 leaders in September.
Sahasranamam, an associate professor at the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship at Strathclyde Business School, Glasgow, UK and a co-author of the GEM 2022/2023 Global Report (among others), notes: “It was a wonderful opportunity to engage in policy development at the intersection of entrepreneurship and SDGs and share the platform with some of the stalwarts from industry and policy. I am glad to be given this opportunity by the Startup20 team to engage in the translation of research to policy and impact through this task force.”
Startup20 has five main task forces – Foundation, Alliances, Finance, Inclusion, and Sustainability. The task forces are structured to develop key priorities and bring forward the topics in which recommendations would be formulated to support the startup ecosystems globally. Through multiple deliberations, the task forces have developed a policy communique for global startup ecosystem development and have received feedback from startup ecosystem stakeholders from G20 nations over the last month. These recommendations would be finalized at the Startup20 Summit in Gurugram in July 2023 to be handed over to the G20 leaders at the 18th G20 Heads of State and Government Summit in New Delhi.
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