1-1. Project Summary
1) Name of Project: Active entrepreneurship ecosystem in an East Asian developing country
2) Type of Project: Bolstering Korea's global competence on East Asia development issure

1-2 Purpose and necessity of the project
To study current entrepreneurial situation in a developing country in East Asia and develop feasible ideas to support and nurture the local startup/SME ecosystem.

1-3. Target and impact of the project
The project targets local foundations, academics, and companies interested in practical means to create a startup & SME sector in the region. The project successfully impacts more than 160 direct participants, 640 indirect participants, to apply key learnings to develop an effective multi-year roadmap for supporting startups and small and medium enterprises in a region of more than 500,000 persons and enable scalable market-oriented enterprises to flourish.

1-4. Initial plan of the project
Project Operator relied on our past work in-country training more than 1700 East Asian with an extensive database of past participants and survey results to conduct initial scoping of the project, narrow down interesting ideas, institution and existing projects worth investigating in this area. We also used media and other source to conduct secondary research to understand the state of knowledge on the region.
More importantly, we planned to conduct primary research of this project from interview with knowledgeable people and potential implementers in a developing country in East Asia. In order to complete the research, we also needed to visit similar cities with developing entrepreneurship ecosystem, meet with experienced community builders and learn how they deal with challenges in such nascent environment.

1-5. Details of the project
The project started from late June - early July 2017. At the beginning, we needed to work with our local partners to have agreement on program scope and timeline. After that, our team worked to draft the research areas and key research questions.
 During the project period, our team organized trips to different developing and developed countries in the area, includes 3 times to Singapore, 3 times to China & 1 trip to the centre of Vietnam, to meet with key partners and insightful professors to discuss and proceed interviews. We also had a consultant and research lead from the US stay in Saigon to help interview relevant discussants. We also had one in-person-report to the Foundation in November and are in the process of closing out the grant by December 2017.

1-6. Self-evaluation of the project
From our business travel to different country in the areas and meetings with key people from each areas, we gained useful insights and findings which can be used to give local and international audience up-to-date understandings of how frontier entrepreneurial ecosystems can be built, as well as to be cutting-edge in terms of ideas for catalyzing the entrepreneurial ecosystem within the targeted developing East Asian country.
We had chance to meet with people from the main market-oriented hub in the country to discuss direction for developing the hub and a realistic pathway to develop a localized entrepreneurial ecosystem in the area. We and our partners both find the discussions critical to the development of the country's economic and entrepreneurial ecosystem. However, due to current tense international, we didn't have enough opportunity to implement and test some of the ideas, as well as solicit further buy-in and feedback from key stakeholders, which further programs can support. We also realize the lack of practical knowledge and insights from our local partners with regards to entrepreneurship, which we believe can only be solved by learning from experience through an active incubation program and overseas exposure training.

1-7. Performance of the project
We believe this project is the first step of the process of building and developing a localized entrepreneurial ecosystem in the key market oriented hub in the developing East Asian country. We have gained useful findings for the research which will give the internal and international audience deeper insight of a potential dynamic hub which has the potential to build the first generation of startups and influence the development of a national entrepreneurship movement. We were also successfully in delivering new knowledge and mindset to our local partners through workshops as part of our research methodology. These partners will cooperate closely with CE in developing a start-up community and incubation program in the country in the future.

1-8. Limitations
As mentioned above, this research is the initial step to gain insights and understand the region, in the hope to build a localized entrepreneurial ecosystem in the key market-oriented hub in the developing East Asian country.
During the process of conducting this research, CE realized certain limitations and challenges to our goals. he lack of a community space (e.g. incubator/co-working space) for networking and connecting entrepreneurs and business people from different business backgrounds is one critical difficulty we face while trying to reach out and widen the range of interviewees and to test out needed ecosystem building concepts. Second, our local partners lacked global knowledge and practical insights and had to be educated on certain concepts regarding entrepreneurship ecosystems - such as the importance of an open culture for innovation, legal structures of enterprises, or the need for networking among a diverse group of people. They may have the basic and theoretical knowledge about businesses however, they are still struggling to understand different cultural concepts and factors in running real businesses and building an actual community for mind-like entrepreneurs. We believe that it is important for local participants to have opportunities in the future to actually build startups (through an incubator), and receive mentoring and training through workshops, as well as gain more exposure overseas. These will enable local partners to gain a deeper understanding into how startups work and what is needed to advance the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

1-9. Project Operator's future plan after the project
We want to launch the first successful startup generation which can help support and nurture the next generation. We believe that considering different activities that contribute to different aspects of an entrepreneurship ecosystem (the rainforest canvas framework) is the best way to formulate a strategy for programs and to evaluate progress. As the economic systems changes in PRK we hope that a local culture of co-working, mentoring and angel investing develops. To do so, we have identified in our research five key projects needed to advance this ecosystem.
In order to pursue our goal, we need to keep building our relationship with local partners, deliver essential knowledge to local entrepreneurs and create opportunity for them to access practical information and realistic experience. We believe in the proven model of training the trainers, in which we bring workshop leaders to the country to train local mentors and bring local mentors, regulators and community leaders overseas to learn from other countries' systems and gain realistic exposure is essential in growing the ecosystem. Bringing the locals overseas will also be a great chance to show them growing entrepreneurial ecosystems in different cultures and have open conversation with them about the issues. At the same time, CE will continue our training programs in-country to reach out to domestic entrepreneurs and build our network in the region. Our medium term goal is to develop an incubator that can catalyze the growth of the entrepreneurial ecosystem by hosting incubation programs, networking events, startups and help nurture a startup community.