Dear Friends,

Greetings from NUS Entrepreneurship Centre and Welcome to the December 2002 edition of our centre's e-Newsletter! I hope you have found our November edition useful and have had the time to attend some of our events last month. From year 2003 onwards, you will be receiving our e-Newsletter bi-monthly. From 1 December 2002, our centre has been renamed NUS Entrepreneurship Centre (instead of Centre for Entrepreneurship) to further emphasize our pivotal role in promoting Entrepreneurship Education, Research and Outreach within the NUS community. Please continue to give us your suggestions for how we can work with you. If you know of colleagues who may be interested to be on our emailing list, please feel free to forward this e-Newsletter to them or ask them to contact us directly.

Thank you and Best Wishes for the New Year!

Warmest Regards,
Assoc Prof Wong Poh Kam, Director
Ms Gean Chu, Administrative Officer

>> NUS Wireless Venture Forum
In Q1 2003, we will be launching a new initiative called the NUS Wireless Venture Forum to promote the development of the wireless entrepreneurial community in Singapore. Besides facilitating networking and exchange among Singaporean entrepreneurs and investors who are targetting the global wireless marketspace, the forum will serve as a conduit for conducting research on wireless industry development and wireless venturing best practice. In addition, the forum will link the wireless venturing community in Singapore with leading wireless hotspots in the world (including Scandinavia, Silicon Valley, Korea and Japan) through our centre's research link with leading wireless business research institutions in these hotspots. An inaugural event for the forum, a Wireless Startup CEO Roundtable, has been planned on 7 February. A followed up public event on Venturing Opportunities in the Location Based Services (LBS) marketspace is being planned for March in collaboration with IDA.

>> Upcoming Events for Start-Up@Singapore (S@S)
There will be a number of S@S Business Plan Forums for the month of January 2003; where we invite prominent speakers from different industries to share their entreprenuerial and technopreneurial experiences and insights with you. Some of our Organizing, Supporting Committees as well as Partners are NUS Business School Alumni Association, NUS Business Club, NUS Entrepreneurship Society, Institute of Systems Science (ISS), Singapore Computer Society (SCS), IBM Singapore Pte Ltd, Ascendas Pte Ltd, SHARP Electronics (S) Pte Ltd and Defence Science & Techology Agency (DSTA).

To find out more about the Start-Up@Singapore business plan competition and its upcoming events, please visit S@S website. Alternatively, you may wish to contact Ms Jolia Tan at 6874 8461 or email: jolia@nus.edu.sg for more information.

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The month of November was full of excitement as we have successfully organized the following events:

>> Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2002

Coordinated by the London Business School (LBS) and Babson College, the GEM study is an international collaborative research project that has been benchmarking entrepreneurial activities worldwide since 1999. In Singapore, the research project has been conducted by the NUS Entrepreneurship Centre at NUS with funding support from Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) since 2000. The GEM study in 2002 has expanded to cover 37 countries, up from 28 in 2001 and 20 from 2000. Ten national teams are expected to join the GEM consortium in 2003.

The NUS study team held a special seminar cum press release in NUS to present the GEM 2002 research findings on 14 November and attracted a fair bit of media attention, with press coverage by the major dailies, radio and TV news channel. We will continue to collaborate with LBS and Babson College for GEM 2003.

>> Entrepreneurship Research Seminar
A half-day Seminar on "Technology Entrepreneurship" on 29 November and we were pleased to invite 3 speakers for this seminar. One of the presentations was by Professor Sankaran Venkataraman (Samuel L. Slover Research Professor of Business Administration at Darden Business School, University of Virginia, Director of Research of the Batten Institute, and a Visiting Professor at our Centre) on "Human Capital, Ability and the Decision to become an Entrepreneur". Subsequently, Dr. Foo Maw Der (Assistant Professor from NUS Business School) also gave a talk on "Team Diversity and External Evaluation of Business Ideas" and our seminar ended with a presentation by Ms Zhang Jing (PhD candidate from NUS Business School) on "Approaching & Convincing Potential Investors through Guanxi: High-tech Ventures vs. Beijing".



>> Visitors from Taiwan
On 29 November, our centre also hosted a visit by the Vice President and Senior Directors from Chaoyang University of Technology, Taiwan. Arising from the visit, Chaoyang University of Technology expressed strong interest to work with us in the future on joint programs in Entrepreneurship Education and Research.

>> Start-Up@Singapore Kick-off Event
The 4th Start-Up@Singapore Business Plan competition was launched on the 29 November at Suntec Singapore International Convention and Exhibition Centre. We were gratified that over 300 people turned up for the kick-off event. The response and feedbacks received were indeed very encouraging. Following up after this launch, we will be organizing a series of exciting and enriching events in January 2003 and we will inform you in due course.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank our sponsors, partners, co-organizers and supporting organizations for their utmost support and kind attention in making our kick-off event a success. Besides that, we wish to extend you a warm invitation to join S@S as a sponsor, a mentor or a judge and we look forward to any of your suggestions for how we can work with you.

To find out more about the Start-Up@Singapore business plan competition and its upcoming events, please visit S@S website. Alternatively, you may wish to contact Ms Jolia Tan at 6874 8461 or email: jolia@nus.edu.sg for more info.

Our Website
Please visit our NUS Entrepreneurship Centre website for more information about our recent activities as well as latest events.

Feedback & Suggestions
Any feedback, suggestions and contributions to our e-Newsletter are most welcomed.
Please drop us a note at NUS Entrepreneurship Centre.