This year’s Global Entrepreneurship Week will take place from November 14 – 20. Last year, over 400,000 Americans participated in all 50 states. GEW promotes innovation, creativity, job creation, and economic growth through a variety of activities, which include: a competition to find the 50 most promising startups worldwide; a clean technology competition; a competition to win a free yearlong trip around the world; and Startup Weekend, a networking event focused on creating new startups.

Learn more about GEW 2011 here.

Colombia may be associated with violence and drugs in popular culture, but it has recently been strengthening its entrepreneurial base, says the Kauffman Foundation’s Policy Forum Blog. The Colombian government has been removing barriers to starting businesses, educational institutions have been adding more entrepreneurship courses and programs, more business incubators are cropping up, and there is an increased focus on entrepreneurship in the media. Certainly there are still problems with drugs and violence, creating a chaotic environment that discourages many potential entrepreneurs. Nonetheless, some entrepreneurs have found creative ways to respond, such as a company that produces bullet-proof underwear.

Read more at the Policy Forum Blog.

Kauffman Labs for Enterprise Creation recently launched its first Women in Science and Engineering Business Idea Competition. “We know that more women than ever are leading U.S. businesses and hold a nearly three-to-one majority in undergraduate and graduate education, but too few pursue the path of high-growth entrepreneurship,” said Lesa Mitchell, vice president, Kauffman Foundation. “The Women in Science and Engineering Business Idea Competition is designed to illuminate world-changing concepts that have significant commercialization potential, and to escalate their visibility so that more female scientists and engineers are encouraged to pursue their entrepreneurial ideas.”

Learn more about the competition at the Kauffman Foundation’s website.

Also, be sure to read our fascinating Kaizen interviews with two highly-educated female entrepreneurs, Reena Kapoor and Judy Estrin. Both women share their thoughts on the effect of culture on innovation and entrepreneurship.

Global Entrepreneurship Week starts November 16. From the website: “For one week, millions of young people around the world join a growing movement of entrepreneurial people, to generate new ideas and to seek better ways of doing things. Countries across six continents come together to celebrate Global Entrepreneurship Week, an initiative to inspire young people to embrace innovation, imagination and creativity. To think big. To turn their ideas into reality. To make their mark.”

Find out about Entrepreneurship Week events in the United States here.

Jonathan Ortmans covered Bolivia in his recent Policy Forum Blog post. “…[I]t is young firms that grow that provide the most benefits to society in terms of job and wealth creation and innovation,” he writes. “Thus, the challenge ahead for Bolivia is to enable more growth entrepreneurs.” the problem, according to Ortmans, is that the Bolivian government’s policies “discourage the participation of entrepreneurs in the economy.”

However, “young Bolivians understand that they can create a “new” breed of enterprise, different from the micro-businesses that have flourished in Bolivia due to necessity. They envision enterprises that capture opportunities for innovation and that generate more employment, more wealth and improved social conditions for everyone in the process.”

Read the full article here.

Iceland took first place in INSEAD’s Global Innovation Index (PDF) this year. Last year it won an award for best entrepreneurship movement. Iceland’s strengths, therefore, in entrepreneurship and innovation could help the country recover from its recent banking collapse. Read more at the Policy Dialogue on Entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship is becoming more popular in Brazil, despite the relative difficulty of starting a business there and the complexity of the country’s tax system.

Read more about the conditions driving Brazil’s entrepreneurship boom at the Policy Dialogue on Entrepreneurship Blog.

And not only that, Brazil has the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016.

The Kauffman Foundation published the findings from their study, “Are Women Entrepreneurs Different From Men?” The researchers asked successful, high growth male and female entrepreneurs what factors they believe led to their success. Some the key factors that female entrepreneurs valued more highly than males were professional and personal networks and support.

Read the article at the Kauffman Foundation for more.

Two weeks ago, the Policy Dialogue on Entrepreneurship explored entrepreneurship in Turkey. Now Jonathan Ortmans looks at Saudi Arabia and finds a very entrepreneurial country. For example, it is ranked number 13 out of 183 economies for “ease of starting a business” (the U.S. is number 8).

Read more here.

The Kauffman Foundation’s Policy Dialogue on Entrepreneurship has a fascinating article on entrepreneurship in Turkey. Why, asks author Jonathan Ortmans, does Turkey have such a low rate of entrepreneurship when it is so strong economically?

Read the article here.