Carl Schramm, president and CEO of the Kauffman Foundation, travelled to Rome recently to help launch
GEW/Italy 2011 as well as Kauffman's Fasttrac program with the META Group.
The launch announcements occurred during Creativity and Innovation 2011, four-days of events, conferences and exhibitions for actors and know-how providers of creativity and innovation that operate in the metropolitan area of Rome. The event was held at MACRO, the Museum of Contemporary Art, a nineteenth-century complex that famously once served as a slaughterhouse in the capital city.
Luigi Amati, president of META Group, introduced Schramm as
"the evangelist of entrepreneurship" as he was once called in the pages of The Economist. Starting the speech in surprisingly fluent Italian, Schramm quickly switched to English as he talked about Italy and how the former U.S. Ambassador and the present U.S. administration are very interested in the country and concerned that Italy has not yet spawned enough startups. He reiterated that all net new jobs in the U.S. are created by firms less than five years old and that "no entrepreneurs" means "no growth."
Anna Amati, vice president of META Group, announced that the organization would be an
official affiliate of the FastTrac program which allows would-be-entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs to receive information, tools, resources and networks necessary to start and grow successful businesses.
The festivities concluded with a reception at EnLabs, Italy's first "open incubator" and business accelerator which also supports co-working. It was founded in November 2010 just after Global Entrepreneurship Week and has quickly established itself as a pioneer in innovation and entrepreneurship in Italy, housing more than 20 companies. EnLabs is positioned as the launch pad for new business creation both in a national and international context, facilitating the start up development process in Italy, Silicon Valley or other dynamics areas around the globe.