Young Entrepreneurship

As a company that houses Junior Achievement, a world renowned charity organisation that promotes entrepreneurship amongst young people, our belief and experience is that every young person has tremendous potential for entrepreneurship.

The challenge for our Singaporean youth today is that we live in a society characterized by ‘kiasuism.’ We are not only afraid to fail, but we also disdain failures in favour of success stories. This culture runs contrary to fostering entrepreneurship. It is not surprising most graduating students prefer to look for jobs than to start their own businesses. The media is also more excited about reporting major foreign direct investments than brave initiatives by local entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurship cannot be created. We can only develop the environment to foster its growth; an environment where entrepreneurship is encouraged, valued and supported. To do so, we need to craft a national youth entrepreneurship blueprint with inputs from the government, entrepreneurs, and other relevant constituents. This blueprint should be championed and crafted by both prominent as well as struggling entrepreneurs. They will know how to create and more importantly, implement programmes to groom young entrepreneurs.

Young people are generally not short of ideas on how to start a new business. What they need is direction on how to obtain relevant information, conduct feasibility studies, access capital and talents, and implement their ideas by leveraging on the right advice, training, facilities, peer-to-peer support, networks, and other resources. It’s about time, we groom our own ‘Bill Gates,’ ‘Steve Jobs,’ ‘Larry Page,’ and ‘Sergey Brin.’

Our future needs to be supported by a substantial and growing pool of young entrepreneurs who will be more loyal and committed to investing in their home country.
Go4It!

I hope this message will find a place in your heart.

By the way, I have also recorded other reflections.

Please go to ‘Notes’ found below my profile picture.

Visit my Inspiration blog at http://liewinspiration.wordpress.com/

Visit my Transformation blog at http://hsrpatrickliew.wordpress.com/

Please read them and continue to teach me.

Life is FUNtastic!