GITA Project Lead Professor Neil Towers and Project Manager Nadine Sulkowski travelled to Jakarta in June to participate in a public panel discussion at the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education (MoRTHE). Professor Towers, responsible for leading research in the University of Gloucestershire School of Business and Technology, introduced the GITA project in a presentation entitled “Embedding Entrepreneurial Capacity Building in HEIs for Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Creation– a Triangular Approach”. He was then joined for the panel discussion by Professor Ismunandar, Director General of Learning and Student Affairs at MoRTHE and Mr Bima Laga, Associate Vice President of Public Policy and Government Relations at Indonesia’s e-commerce giant Bukalapak. Ms Sulkowski, the School’s International Development Lead, moderated the session.

The event follows a previous debate at the 3rd International Conference on Family Business and Entrepreneurship (ICFBE) in Bali earlier this year. The ICFBE conference brought together academics and entrepreneurs from across Indonesia and beyond. Implications and future strategies for entrepreneurship education were addressed in one of the plenary sessions during which Professor Towers was joined by Professor Rina Indiastuti, Secretary of the Directorate General of Learning and Student Affairs at MoRTHE. The June panel discussion at MoRTHE, which was attended by over 100 representatives of Indonesian universities continued to address the need of working in partnership to develop entrepreneurship in Indonesia’s diverse regions and sectors, and to address the specific support needs of, for example, family businesses, marginalised groups, student entrepreneurs, and high growth and international ventures. Many attendees expressed an interest in learning more about the GITA project and the methodology for implementation with a view to create a similar infrastructure within their own institutions. Exemplifying the scalability of the GITA project across Indonesia, this event cemented the Consortium’s aspirations for the creation of a National Association to maximise the impact of the project across Indonesia.

The Deputy Minister of MoRTHE at the GITA panel discussion in Jakarta in June 2019