Global Entrepreneurship Week 2025 Celebrating innovation
My week started in the London Stock Exchange waiting with a star-studded cast of entrepreneurs for the 8am bell announcing the opening of the day’s trade and the lunch of Global Entrepreneurship Week in the UK. I was enthralled.
Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) runs until 23 Nov, and this year’s theme is ‘Together We Build’. 200 countries and 10 million people are expected to participate in 40,000 events. GEW was launched by then Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2008 to promote entrepreneurship and encourage young people to see it as a viable option. The week is a timely reminder of the vital role entrepreneurs play in shaping economies, society, and local communities.
From high-growth startups to microbusinesses and social enterprises, entrepreneurs drive innovation, resilience, and inclusive growth. They take risks, disrupt, create jobs and add social value. Small and medium-sized enterprises account for more than 99% of all UK businesses and employ more than 16 million people. They inject dynamism, disrupt stagnant sectors, and pioneer new markets. They respond quickly to changing consumer needs and global challenges and are essential to the UK’s economic adaptability and long-term competitiveness.
Many are purpose-driven, tackling social and environmental issues. Social entrepreneurs, disabled founders, and minority-led businesses are building ventures that reflect lived experience and community insight, often filling gaps left by traditional institutions. They deliver services and solve problems while shifting narratives, challenging inequality, and building trust in underserved communities.
Whether it’s a high street café, a tech hub, or a community-led cooperative, these ventures breathe life into neighbourhoods with innovation and jobs. They keep wealth in and attract it into, local communities. In rural areas and post-industrial towns entrepreneurship rebuilds, renews and adds resilience.
Supporting entrepreneurs means providing accessible finance, support networks, and empowering regulation. No founder should be left behind. All risk takers need the space to try and fail, get on the horse again and learn from failures without censure. Being an entrepreneur takes guts. We need to applaud and encourage the entrepreneurial mindset and improve the ecosystem in which they can try, strive and ultimately thrive.
The IoD’s Director magazine this quarter is on the theme of entrepreneurship and is out on 27 November.
This blog was written by Liz Barclay, IoD Special Adviser, Small Business and Entrepreneurship
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