BizEd

JulAug2015

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64 BizEd JULY | AUGUST 2015 people+places PHOTOGRAPH BY ISTOCK Startup Catalyst COLLABORATION TO BOOST BUSINESS IN BELARUS Brest, Grodno, Vitebsk, Mogilev, and Gomel. Each center will provide the country's entrepreneurs with access to technology, trained sta, and courses taught by business school faculty. Faculty from the University of Mary- land in College Park and Babson College in Babson Park, Massachusetts, will participate in the eort, and pro bono advisors from MBAs Without Borders will be available to oer guidance. Pro- gram coordinators plan to create new courses such as IT Entrepreneurship and Eective Partnering. Startup activity is on the rise in Belarus, thanks largely to a series of governmental reforms put into place since 2006, explains Guy Pfeermann, CEO of GBSN. For instance, the govern- ment eliminated a practice called the "Golden Share," which authorized state intervention in private business, and it established a process that made it possi- ble for people to register new businesses in a single day. OĊ½cials also created tax incentives for business investment. One such incentive involves the Belarus High Technologies Park. Tech companies that are park residents will have their taxes waived until the year 2020; the individ- ual income tax for their employees is fixed at 9 percent until 2020 as well. In a surprising twist, businesses do not have to be physically located in the park itself to be "residents"; eligible firms can reap the benefits from anywhere in Belarus. Such measures have helped Belarus move from 106th place to 57th place on the World Bank's "Doing Business" ranking, which measures the ease of starting, growing, and managing busi- nesses in dierent countries. But even so, "Belarusian entrepreneurs suer from a shortage of qualitative business education," says Pavel Daneyko, IPM's general director. DRIVES and the six CEEs will help "make business educa- tion more aordable [and] contribute to the growth of competitiveness in Belarusian enterprises." Belarus has moved from 107th place to 57th place in the World Bank's "Doing Business" ranking. THREE ORGANIZATIONS HAVE JOINED FORCES to give a boost to entrepreneurial activity in Eastern Europe. They include the Global Business School Network (GBSN), an alliance of busi- ness schools that promotes business education in emerging countries; IPM Business School in Minsk, Belarus; and Pyxera Global, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., that matches MBAs with pro bono assignments around the world. The three part- ners will collaborate to implement the Delivering Regional In- struction Vital to Entrepreneurial Success Belarus (DRIVES), a program designed to provide entrepreneurship training to the Belarusian private sector. Funded by USAID, DRIVES will establish six Centers of Excellence in Entrepreneurship (CEEs) in the cities of Minsk,

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