2023 Global Entrepreneurship Congress to be held in Melbourne

The Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN), an organisation working to foster collaboration in the innovation ecosystem has announced that next year’s annual congress will be held in Melbourne.

At this year’s Global Entrepreneurship Congress (GEC) hosted in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Digital Nation Australia spoke to Chad Renando, managing director for the GEN in Australia.

He said next year is the right time for Melbourne to host the event.

“We've had a lot of growth in the innovation ecosystem across Australia. There’s a lot of really excellent things happening across the states, particularly in Melbourne, it's an award-winning ecosystem,” he said.

“What they've done with LaunchVic, in order to make targeted, focused bets to build all the elements of the ecosystem, from your investors, award-winning investment programs at a policy level. You've got strength in your spaces in your incubation, you've got some strengths in your sector, and it all works together really well.”

Renando said the focus of next year’s GEC will play into the strengths of the Melbourne ecosystem.

“We’re going to be focusing on specific sectors from the life sciences and the strengths along the health sector and healthtech, and agriculture, and financial services, and consumer support, entertainment, education.”

The challenge then, will be to ensure that it is relevant to a global audience.

“How do we connect not only across Melbourne, but across Australia and have a have a national brand, which is celebrating within Melbourne?

“How do we celebrate [those strengths] and make those globally relevant and connect globally with other people doing those kinds of things?”

Approximately a dozen Australian delegates participated in this year’s GEC in Saudi Arabia, and Renando said the GEN team will work with them and other members in the innovation ecosystem in Australia to understand what can be learned from this year’s event, and help to design next year’s congress on Australian soil.

“There are people that are passionate about it, they live and breathe that within the Australian ecosystem. So, our job rapidly with the next two or three months is to reach out to those people, build up those working groups, come together and say, ‘We're going have this major event in 12 months, help inform us about what would make the most impact’,” he said.

While the biggest difference between the Melbourne and Saudi innovation ecosystems is that the Saudi ecosystem is still emerging, Renando believes there are still commonalities, and learnings to take on.

“I think one of the commonalities about something like a GEC is to mobilise everybody's attention to focus on how do we do this better? How do we support this community and transition and really bring people together? So just that sense of local cohesion with a global awareness, I think, is something that we can take from this.”

While there is no lack of programs in the Australian innovation ecosystem, Renando believes that what is needed is cohesion.

“What happens with GEC is you get over 2500 people congregating in one location to have that conversation, and the legacy they leave behind, those conversations will then build the infrastructure we need. So that 10 years on we'll look back and say, ‘I remember that conversation started here and built and established the sustainable approach, decades on.’”

Editor's Note: Velvet-Belle Templeman travelled to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia as a guest of MCI Australia to report on the Global Entrepreneurship Congress.