This summer, KAIST became host to the 2015 Global Entrepreneurial Energy (GEE) Camp. 23 students from KAIST, the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), and the University of Waterloo gathered in the Startup KAIST Studio (W8) to learn about tech entrepreneurship from various industry leaders, share ideas, and interact with each other. The summer camp was a good opportunity for young aspiring entrepreneurs to be introduced to the world of startups and was very much in the spirit of South Korea’s creative economy initiative.

The Global Entrepreneurial Energy Camp is one of KAIST’s many latest efforts to promote entrepreneurship and innovation to the upcoming generation. Last year marked the opening of Startup KAIST, a startup platform created to spread startup culture within the school and support young entrepreneurs during the whole startup cycle. Later that year, KAIST established the social enterprise Venture Investment Holdings to provide KAIST startups the necessary seed money and business incubation for commercialization.

This September, our university announced that undergraduates will now be able to minor in the so-called Entrepreneurship Program, a program that consists of 6 minor courses designed to raise the next generation of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM)-based entrepreneurs and prepare them for the business end of startups.

The creative economy initiative and KAIST’s efforts to promote entrepreneurship is starting to bear fruit. The school is seeing an increasing number of students showing active interest in startup culture. Since the opening of Startup KAIST in 2014, a total of 27 teams have begun their own startups with the aid of programs organized by Startup KAIST, who have set aside an annual budget of 600 million KRW to help young entrepreneurs bring their ideas to the market.

Bicircle, an award-winning KAIST startup, is actually gaining momentum towards commercialization. The bike-sharing platform has already entered its beta-test phase, having just tested out their bikes on campus during the summer vacation. Such publicity garnered by the student-run startup is likely to inspire others to delve into entrepreneurship themselves and help fuel the startup boom in KAIST.