NFTE World Series of Innovation to Be Featured for Global Entrepreneurship Week

Press release (Sept. 8, 2011) — The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), an international nonprofit organization dedicated to inspiring young people from low-income communities to stay in school and to recognize business opportunities, announced its World Series of Innovation, presented by Microsoft, was selected as a featured event for the 2011 Global Entrepreneurship Week from Nov. 14-20.

The World Series of Innovation extends NFTE’s message of the power of entrepreneurship education and the importance of innovation to young people nationwide by challenging teams of students to devise innovative products and services targeted at a specific market opportunities and show how they would sell and market to the public.

“The World Series of Innovation will bring NFTE’s pioneering experiential education program and vital message about the importance of innovation and entrepreneurship in our society to thousands of new young people around the globe,” said Amy Rosen, president and CEO of NFTE. “With the economy still mired in problems, now more than ever NFTE feels an obligation to inspire as many young people as possible to think creatively about their world and seize opportunities to meet market demands and social needs. We are sowing the seeds of the next generation of entrepreneurs every day.”

NFTE is proud to have Microsoft as the presenting sponsor of the World Series of Innovation. Microsoft is issuing a challenge for students to create mobile phone apps and games that raise awareness and provide solutions for common student and school issues. Microsoft will provide the winning teams with a development partner to take the idea and bring it to market.

“Microsoft and NFTE have worked together for a number of years as both our organizations share the goal of encouraging young people to look at the world differently and to think about how they might contribute to make their communities stronger,” said Anthony Salcito, vice president, Worldwide Education, Microsoft Corp. “We are excited to see the mobile app and game ideas students will come up with to improve education. As they gain real world experience in this competition, we hope the students will gain new skills that may help them jump start a career and turn their ideas into reality.”