NUS prof Wong Poh Kam wins world entrepreneurship award

WONG Poh Kam, director of the NUS Entrepreneurship Centre at the National University of Singapore (NUS), has clinched the World Entrepreneurship Forum's (WEF) 2015 Entrepreneur for the World Award (Educator Category).

This makes him one of only five recipients this year, and the first faculty member from a Singaporean university to receive the prestigious accolade.

Said WEF executive chairman Tugrul Atamer: "Prof Wong has been pivotal in creating a more entrepreneurial Singapore by nurturing the next generation of entrepreneurs and facilitating the spread of an entrepreneurial culture."

Among several initiatives Prof Wong has started at NUS is the NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) programme, which sends selected undergraduate students for a one-year full-time internship in startups in Silicon Valley, New York City, Shanghai, Beijing, Israel, and Stockholm, and part-time entrepreneurship courses at partner universities such as Stanford, NYUTech, Fudan University and Tsinghua University.

Since NOC's launch in 2001, over 2,000 students have graduated from the programme, with more than 150 startups created by them.

Said Prof Wong: "What I have been able to do would not have been possible without the excellent policy support provided by the government to institutions of higher learning in Singapore. I hope that the award will inspire many more entrepreneurship educators who are more capable than me to contribute to building vibrant entrepreneurship support ecosystems across Asia."

WEF and the awards were founded in 2008 by the EMLYON Business School in France, and joined by Zhejiang University in China, as well as the Action Community for Entrepreneurship and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Past award recipients include Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group; and Liu Chuan-Zi, founder of Lenovo.