World Entrepreneur of the Year: the judging process

June 12, 2014 Leave a comment

June 3, 2014 7:58 pm

Methodology and judging process

By Maria Pinelli

World Entrepreneur of the Year: the judging process

EY Entrepreneur of the Year (EOY) was founded in 1986. Since then it has expanded to 150 cities in 60 countries with awards presented each year to a thousand of the world’s leading entrepreneurs.

The awards are judged by entrepreneurs, including many former EOY winners. It is a celebration of entrepreneurial spirit and recognition for some of the world’s most inspiring entrepreneurs – whose innovation, new products, services and job creation are so critical to the health of the global economy.

Winners from 60 countries attended the 14th World Entrepreneur of the Year (WEOY) award in Monaco in June this year. Past winners of WEOY include: Hamdi Ulukaya of Chobani, Equity Bank’s James Mwangi, Olivia Lum of Hyflux, Narayana Murthy, co-founder of Infosys, and Guy Laliberté of Cirque du Soleil.

So how do the judges award the WEOY?

Each country winner of the award goes through to the global contest and is then re-evaluated by a separate independent judging panel, which is rotated annually.

Each judge receives a detailed history of the country winners and meets the finalists in formal interviews and at informal events to hear their stories. The panel then convenes to rate candidates for six traits:

● Entrepreneurial spirit: perseverance and fresh thinking; how finalists have overcome obstacles;

● Financial performance: today and their past record; their strategies for long-term growth sustainability;

● Strategic direction: how finalists turn their visions into reality; growth goals; how they differentiate themselves;

● Global impact: in terms of revenue, operations and influence;

● Innovation: whether entrepreneurs anticipate and embrace change; whether there is continuous improvement and innovation throughout the business;

● Personal integrity and influence: corporate social responsibility; impact on the environment; improving life in the wider community.

Maria Pinelli is global vice-chairwoman for strategic growth markets at EY

 

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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