Global Entrepreneurship Week: Here’s what to know

On Thursday night, IDEA, the student-run venture accelerator, will present NEXPO, its annual venture showcase event. This year marks the first time NEXPO will be held in ISEC. Photo by Adam Glanzman/Northeastern University

Global Entrepreneurship Week is the world’s largest celebration of innovators and entrepreneurs, and Northeastern will host a number of events this week—Nov. 13-16—featuring its growing entrepreneurship ecosystem and innovators in the university community.

Here’s a quick look at what to know about the events on campus. The full schedule and more information is also available on Northeastern’s Global Entrepreneurship Week website.

MONDAY

The Entrepreneurs Club presents Demo Day, which marks the culmination of its semesterlong Husky Startup Challenge. At Demo Day, which runs from 6 to 8:30 p.m. in the Curry Student Center Ballroom, students present their startups to a panel of judges and the larger Northeastern and entrepreneurship communities. The startups will host tables for the first hour, which is followed by the pitch competition and then an awards ceremony.

TUESDAY

The Office of Alumni Relations presents “Dream, Discover, Disrupt: A Celebration of Entrepreneurs and Innovators at Northeastern.” At the event, Amin Khoury, MBA’89, the founder of B/E Aerospace, will receive Northeastern’s inaugural Distinguished Entrepreneur Award and deliver the keynote address. The event, held in the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex, will begin at 6:15 p.m. and conclude at 9 p.m.

The event is free, though registration is required.

WEDNESDAY

There are three events throughout the day:

  • 12-1 p.m., online: Alumnus Greg Skloot, DMSB’12, will host a webinar designed to help Northeastern entrepreneurs improve the marketing strategies for their startups
  • 1-2 p.m., 433 Curry Student Center: The Social Enterprise Institute hosts an event where two students will share their social enterprise experiences. Katie Powers, SSH’18, will discuss her co-op and continued work with Kiva, an online microfinance crowdfunding platform that helps alleviate poverty by empowering entrepreneurship; and Hannah Muthoot, DMSB’19, will share her experience at a nonprofit childcare center in Pune, India.
  • 8-10 p.m., ISEC: IDEA, Scout, Generate, and the Entrepreneurs Club—student organizations that are part of Mosaic—will lead an ideation workshop that will walk participants through identifying a problem statement, determining the audience, identifying opportunities for innovation, and rapid idea generation and prototyping processes. Register here.

THURSDAY

IDEA, the student-run venture accelerator, presents NEXPO, its annual venture showcase event, held this year in the atrium of ISEC from 6:30 to 9 p.m. About two-dozen startups across various industries and markets—and that are at various stages within IDEA—will present their ideas and businesses. Visitors can also learn more about the many student organizations and resources throughout Northeastern’s entrepreneurship ecosystem. Also new this year, nine ventures from the university’s National Science Foundation I-Corps program will be exhibiting at NEXPO. The I-Corps program is designed to help scientists and engineers launch companies based on research in their labs.