4th JA-YE Graduate Competition - opening speech

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Entrepreneurs and innovators,

Supporting young people to develop their creativity and self belief is fundamental for our future welfare for three main reasons:

Firstly, human capital is the most important factor in a country’s wealth and value creation.
Secondly, young people often have a sincere engagement in finding creative, sustainable solutions to the world’s challenges.
And finally: We can eradicate extreme poverty. Innovation and business is instrumental in reaching this goal.

Before I continue, I would like to welcome students from Denmark, Russia, Belgium, Finland, Switzerland, Netherlands and Romania to this 4th Graduate Competition. I hope you will have an inspiring gathering here in Oslo along with your Norwegian fellow-students. I will like to congratulate you all for your achievements and for coming so far. It is truly remarkable to see what you already have created and achieved.

Entrepreneurship is the ability to turn ideas into action. It includes creativity, innovation and risk taking. But it also assumes a responsibility towards our fellow human beings, the thousands of individuals that are the collective engine, directly or indirectly, of enterprise. I am happy to note that, in the last few years, there has been a rapidly increasing interest in Corporate Social Responsibility. Responsible entrepreneurship involves taking action to integrate social and environmental issues into business operations.

I am therefore pleased to see that several of the companies participating in this event have environmental aspects and CSR as a part of their business idea.

Over the last year, I have visited a number of schools around Norway to talk about development and the importance of human dignity. I am often struck by the global awareness and perspectives of students, and by their eagerness and even impatience to find sustainable solutions to the challenges facing the world. Our generation – I allow myself to be included, since I’m still quite young – we are the first generation with a realistic chance of ending extreme poverty. The UN Charter provides us with direction. The Millennium Development Goals spell out what needs to be done. Our endorsement of these goals demonstrates our commitment to action. Entrepreneurs can play an important role in this work. I would like to mention one example of how young people under the most difficult circumstances can contribute to positive change through business:
Two years ago, I was on a trip to Sierra Leone as ambassador for UNDP.

Sierra Leone was struck by a terrible and bloody civil war. In post-war time, the country’s youth was – and is still – vulnerable, and unemployment rates high. One local project in the capitol Freetown fascinated me: Young men were employed at a car wash. In the normal working hours, they earned some money for themselves – but mostly for the owner. If they wanted to continue work after the regular opening hours, the money went straight to themselves. This was a great motivation to make young people work. The project was a result of local entrepreneurial spirit.

There are many success stories within JA-YE. Proverb, a Dutch company, is one of them. The company had their graduate program in 2003 and is now a well run company represented in seven European countries. Similar examples can be found in all of JA-YE Europe’s 40 member nations.

If young people are able to see the multitude of opportunities that are available to them, they will re-invent the future and be able to contribute actively in promoting sustainable development. This is a necessity if we want to create a world that we’ll be proud to hand over to our children. And this is ultimately innovation’s main contributions to society.

Thank you