
As a member of the press attending a World Economic Forum (WEF) conference, I was surprised by how welcomed I felt.
Let’s face it, failure sucks. Failing is neither particularly fun nor particularly rewarding. And yet entrepreneurs do it all the time. According to a recent study from Harvard, three-quarters of venture-backed start-ups fail. At the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of the New Champions last week, failure and the resilience required to bounce back from it were discussed as necessary requirements for future entrepreneurs.
Population was on the mind of many attendees of the World Economic Forum’s 7th Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Dalian, China this week, even if the word was rarely spoken. The theme of this year’s meeting was “Meeting the Innovation Imperative.” Implicit to the theme, however, was the fact that the imperative for innovation is driven in large part by a bloated global population that reached seven billion in 2011 and is on its way to nine billion by 2050.
DETROIT, US – How does a bankrupt city with a declining population and dwindling public finances provide transportation for its residents? Detroit’s answer to that question has increasingly been to leverage private investments and entrepreneurial ideas. A few of these entrepreneurial ideas are homegrown. Nearly six years ago local investors developed the M1 Rail concept, the city’s first-ever light rail. The $140 million project, funded almost entirely by private investment, breaks ground later this month and will start operations in the late 2015.