The Kairos Global Summit, hosted in partnership with the United Nations and New York Stock Exchange, will bring together 350 of the most innovative and entrepreneurial students from around the world to meet 150 of today's most influential leaders.
Over the course of two days beginning on February 3rd in NYC, these current and future world leaders will work together across generations, disciplines, and nations to create high-growth companies that address the world's greatest needs. While Kairos only lasts two days, the mentoring provided in many cases leads to new opportunities for the Mentors and young entrepreneurs. On the trading floor of the NYSE, we will also be unveiling the winners of the 2012 Kairos 50, representing the 50 most innovative ventures coming out of universities around the world. These winners will also be recognized at a private brunch at the Forbes Family Estate.
The Kairos Global Summit has no keynotes, but rather is focused around intimate breakouts with the world leaders and young entrepreneurs. Problem spaces were chosen by asking world leaders, “If you could focus the next generation of entrepreneurs on tackling one problem, what would it be?” As a result, the Kairos Summit focuses around 10 problem spaces including the personalization of education, personalized healthcare diagnosis, secure code to protect individuals and national security, as well as distributed energy. Attendees are broken into groups by the problem space they have chosen to address. Over the course of the two days, the attendees work hand in hand across generations, disciplines, and nations to identify innovative private sector solutions that can be developed to address these global needs. The young entrepreneurs are then able to come together to launch these companies with the guidance of the business, political, science, nonprofit, and media leaders to support them. Over the past three years, Kairos Society has helped young entrepreneurs worldwide grow over 100 companies that have subsequently been recognized with awards including: Forbes College All-Star Entrepreneurs, Popular Science Invention of the Year, Business Week Young Entrepreneur of the Year, and Inc Newpreneur of the Year.
