The Entrepreneurship Week is our flagship annual program. A series of local entrepreneurship events and competitions organized across region 8 (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) by local ambassadors. Organizers of the best events receive the “best ambassadors” awards and the top 3 startups from every competition join the IEEE Region 8 Pitch Competition for a chance to win monetary support and mentorship. If you’re interested and motivated to organize an Entrepreneurship Week event, fill out this form and join us!

Lebanon Entrepreneurship week ambassadors organized the ultimate summit and lined up the most exciting workshops presented by talented entrepreneurs and mentors to help founders solidify and bring their ideas to life! Event content: Successful Startup Story on 12/11/2022 (ZOOM) Business Model Canvas on 12/11/2022 (ZOOM) Elevator Pitch Workshop on 13/11/2022 (ZOOM) Round 1 online filtering process to all registered startups Pitching and Public Speaking Workshop on 22/11/2022 (ZOOM) Mentorship week for top 10 qualified startups with experts Final Pitch Day (Round 2 selection of top 3) at American University of Beirut - OSB - Maamari Auditorium on 26/11/2022 Ambassadors: Joseph Abdo, Diana Al Lawand; Hanan Aref; Ali Fawaz; Harout Topjian; Razan Abu Ghadir Sponsors: IEEE Young Professionals Lebanon Section, IEEE Lebanon Section Premium Partner: Talal and Madiha Zein AUB Innovation Park Ecosystem Partners: Berytech, Bloom, Nucleus Ventures, Asher Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at USEK Outreach Partners: Beirut Digital District (BDD), Beirut AI Judges: Youssef Yammine (Berytech), Reda Helbawi (Asher Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at USEK), Carol Awad Bashour (Bloom EMEA), Hani Haidar (Zein AUB iPark), Sevag Babikian (Berytech)

Event content: In cooperation with JSYP22 Congress, that took place on 12/11/2022, IEEE Unleash Took place as a partner to the event, also one of the congress main sessions. IEEE Unleash Training program was delivered to all Competitors in four stages, the first stage was delivered to all registered teams, which covered the topics of Ideation, building MVP, BMC, and Pitching techniques. The second stage was delivered to all teams who were qualified to the finals and covered the topics of Branding and Marketing, Financing a startup and fundraising, success stories, Management Skills for startups. The third stage was to deliver mentoring session to the qualified teams, where we connect each team with a specialized mentor in the business field to couch them and help them with their need. The final stage was to deliver pitching techniques and mentoring for the winners of the competition who were qualified to the IEEE R8 Entrepreneurship Initiative Semi-Finals. IEEE Unleash had a partnership with IEEE Pioneers competition from Palestine, and together we share our training sessions with the competitors from the Palestine sub-section. The IEEE Unleash semi-finals is a virtual entrepreneurship competition that took place on December 6th and December 7th of 2022, where sixteen teams will compete to book a place in the IEEE Unleash Finals. Every team had to pitch an idea in video with no more than 6-min and had the right to attach supporting materials like presentations where each judge had the right to contact the team for more clarifications. There were two groups of jury panels with three judges in each group who scored the ideas based on Innovation, Scalability, Impact, Business Potential, and Market Feasibility, and each judge scored each gauge with a score out of 20 points, with a total score out of 100 for each team. The best eight teams qualified for the finals and had got advanced training and mentoring programs as a part of the pre-finals programs. The IEEE Unleash program is a multi-stage competition aimed at promoting youth entrepreneurship. The competition features a comprehensive 3-month training program for 16 participating teams, with the final event attended by over 100 individuals, including both IEEE members and non-members. During the final event, a series of informative sessions were held, featuring guest speakers discussing the importance of youth engagement in entrepreneurship and a past winner sharing her experience. A panel discussion was also held with four business experts addressing the challenges and differences between entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship. The 8 final teams presented their start-up pitches to the audience and a jury, which evaluated the teams using the criteria provided by IEEE entrepreneurship week. The top three winning teams were announced during the closing ceremony and received an incubation program offered by Omnia incubator in Jordan. Ambassadors: Hadeel Al Haddad, Ali Alkasarweh, Nasiraldeen Abuawwad, Qusai Mashriqi, Shatha Athamneh Sponsors: Umniah The TANK, Amman TV, AlEtihad Bank, Radio Reyadeh Judges: Noor Abu-Jbara, Mohammad migdadi, Amer Ajarmah, Rula Awwad, Mohammad Maani, Mohammad Zidan, Abdallah alghweiri, Samer Bata, Aziz Sajdi

Event Content: The IEEE Pioneers is back in its second edition, with a larger organization scale and a huge step up by including more universities, and by concluding more regions in Palestine that due to the political situation, are not easily accessed, such as Gaza Strip. The second version of the competition built a virtual bridge between both the West Bank and Gaza and was able to promote IEEE and its Entrepreneurship Week in universities there for the purpose of gaining more IEEE members and expanding the number of IEEE Student Branches in Palestine and give students an equal opportunity to compete and get a chance to compete internationally. The competition also concluded different trainings in many interesting topics which enhanced the ability of the contestants to start from forming their ideas into developing them and pitch them in the most creative way. This year both the IEEE Palestine sub-section and IEEE Palestine Young Professionals had an enormous role in organizing the whole event, along with the IEEE Students Branches in Palestine. Ambassadors: Buthayna Qutaina, Masa Qzaih Sponsors: JAWWAL & PALTEL Local partners: IEEE Palestine subsection, IEEE Palestine YP AG, Technopark Palestine, Gaza Sky Geeks, Palestinian Ministry of Telecom & IT, Higher Council for innovation and excellence in Palestine. Palestinian Ministry of entrepreneurship and empowerment. Palestinian Ministry of higher education and scientific research. IEEE Jordanian Ambassadors for several joint training sessions. Judges: Majd Khalife, Lama Shanti, Rand Safi, Razan Nasr, Rania Jaber, Dina Al Masaeid, Rabee Abu Shamleh, Mustafa Ali