Babson Thought Leaders Featured at U.S. State Department's Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Morocco

WELLESLEY, Mass., Nov. 17, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A team of Babson thought leaders has been tapped by the U.S. Department of State for the fifth annual Global Entrepreneurship Summit (the Summit) in Marrakech, Morocco. The Summit will convene thousands of participants from November 19-21, 2014 and will highlight the impact of technology on modern entrepreneurship.

• Babson College President Kerry Healey is a featured panelist on 'How Entrepreneurs and Talents Transcend Borders', which will look at how entrepreneurship, human capital and technology are breaking down borders and enabling closer regional integration.
• Babson professor Candida G. Brush is facilitating an interactive workshop on sustainable cities, which includes several global experts on entrepreneurship ecosystems, including Shanker Singham, Managing Director of the Babson Global Competitiveness and Enterprise Development Project.
• Patricia G. Greene, Babson College's Paul T. Babson Chair in Entrepreneurship, is moderating the Women's Entrepreneurship Day Panel and facilitating a dialogue with entrepreneurs representing countries, including Morocco, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom and Zimbabwe.

At the Summit, the Moroccan Government also plans to announce it has selected Babson Global (a wholly owned subsidiary of Babson College) to advise on the development of an 'Enterprise City'. His Excellency, Minister of Commerce Moulay Hafid Elalamy, of Morocco, will join with Babson Global's Shanker Singham for a signing ceremony launching a Joint Feasibility Exercise with Babson Global regarding an Enterprise City in Morocco. The signing ceremony will take place on November 21, 2014 in Marrakech at the Summit.

An Enterprise City is a zone with a new pro-competitive legal, economic and governance framework that creates prosperity, jobs and incentivizes entrepreneurial activity. The initial phase will involve Babson Global's diagnostic of economic and regulatory barriers to economic activity in Morocco and the region, the identification and quantification of solutions which will spur socially inclusive growth and the development of a regulatory framework which translates the goals of the Moroccan government, stakeholders and developers into a binding set of rules for the zone. "We will work closely with the Moroccan Ministry of Industry, Trade, Investment and Digital Economy and the other stakeholders in order to provide the soft infrastructure – the diagnostic, solutions and ultimately the regulatory framework which will support investment, foreign and domestic, domestic entrepreneurial activity and job creation," said Babson Global's Shanker Singham.

Babson also is bringing its global 'redefine entrepreneurship' campaign to the Summit's Innovation Village. As part of its grassroots effort to engage the world in redefining the word 'entrepreneurship', Babson College is enabling Summit attendees to enter and share their definitions live from the Innovation Village via a new digital hub, define.babson.edu. "By engaging Global Entrepreneurship Summit participants in this campaign, and sharing their contributions in real-time, we help extend the definition of entrepreneurship," said Babson Professor Abdul Ali, who is leading the Babson College delegation at the Summit's Innovation Village. "In doing so, further shape how the world views and values entrepreneurs of all kinds."

The 2014 Summit takes place during Global Entrepreneurship Week, making it the largest of the thousands of entrepreneurship events taking place around the world that week. The Summit will be opened by United States Vice President Joseph Biden, and King Mohammed VI of Morocco. In a press release announcing the GES, the U.S. Department of State wrote: "Entrepreneurship is part of the American culture that we can freely share across international boundaries. Societies that learn entrepreneurial principles can come up with solutions to local problems. These solutions can foster inclusiveness, grow economies, promote stability, expand the international supply chain, and spread the exchange of ideas."

About Babson College

Babson College is the educator, convener, and thought leader for Entrepreneurship of All Kinds™. The College is a dynamic living and learning laboratory, where students, faculty, and staff work together to address the real-world problems of business and society—while at the same time evolving our methods and advancing our programs. We shape the leaders our world needs most: those with strong functional knowledge and the skills and vision to navigate change, accommodate ambiguity, surmount complexity, and motivate teams in a common purpose to create economic and social value. As we have for nearly a half-century, Babson continues to advance Entrepreneurial Thought and Action^® as the most positive force on the planet for generating sustainable economic and social value.

About Babson Global

Babson Global is a wholly owned subsidiary of Babson College designed to increase the college's global reach. The mission of Babson Global is "to put the power of entrepreneurship as the greatest force for social and economic value creation, in the hands of as many people in the world as we can." Babson Global delivers programs that extend Babson's unique pedagogy based on Entrepreneurial Thought and Action™ to new populations beyond the audience for our current undergraduate, graduate and executive education programs.

The Babson Global Competitiveness and Enterprise Development Project works with developing countries to put in place the necessary regulatory environment and infrastructure that will spur economic growth and set the pre-conditions required for entrepreneurship.

About the Global Entrepreneurship Summit

The 2014 Summit marks the fifth year of continued U.S. commitment to promoting entrepreneurs through this forum and the first time it is being held in Africa. The original Summit was hosted in 2010 in Washington to identify ways to deepen ties between business leaders, foundations, universities, and entrepreneurs in the United States and Muslim communities around the world. In subsequent years, the Summit has expanded to be a global event, hosted by the governments of Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Malaysia. This year, the Government of Morocco has graciously opened its doors as the host, showing its shared commitment to promoting entrepreneurship in Africa and around the world. For more information about the 2014 Global Entrepreneurship Summit, please visit: http://gesmarrakech2014.org.

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SOURCE Babson College

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