Edward de Bono Institute Director Dr Leonie Baldacchino and Department of Management resident academic Dr Nathaniel Massa, both from the University of Malta, recently joined delegates from 173 counties at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress, which was held in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Now in its ninth year, the GEC is an annual event that gathers thousands of entrepreneurs, investors, researchers, policymakers and other startup champions to identify new ways of helping founders start and scale new businesses around the world.

The GEC 2017 edition included a variety of high-impact masterclasses and workshops with well-known entrepreneurs, researchers and authors, such as co-founder of Priceline.com Jeff Hoffman, author of The Startup Owner's Manual Bob Dorf, and distinguished entrepreneurship academic from the College of Charleston Professor Kelly Shaver.

Topics covered included digital disruption in a changing economy, analysing the entrepreneurial mindset, enhancing early stage investment, and catalyzing startup communities.

The congress also celebrated the 10 finalists of the international competition Startup Open, which included Malta-based startup Freshy. The founding team of Freshy are four University of Malta students who are developing a mobile application through which cafeterias and restaurants can sell excess food at a discounted price (www.facebook.com/freshy.io/).

In addition to the above, Dr Baldacchino attended the Global Entrepreneurship Network  annual meeting to discuss the events that were held to celebrate Global Entrepreneurship Week in Malta in November 2016 and to plan the forthcoming launch of GEN(Malta).

This is intended to draw together all the players in the Maltese startup ecosystem in order to facilitate communication, collaboration and support, and to enhance their access to international networks and opportunities.

If you are in some way involved in the Maltese entrepreneurship ecosystem and would like to form part of GEN(Malta), please email [email protected].