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Mr. Shangkong | Busy season for Hong Kong's future entrepreneurs - from coffee shops to airport

From coffee shops to the airport, the talk among city's ambitious young is to be their own boss

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The young and ambitious are working towards becoming their own bosses.

The spirit of entrepreneurship has been certainly coming back to Hong Kong this year after growing doubts in recent years over where to find the next Li Ka-shing.

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From almost any Starbucks shop across the city to a fast-growing number of high-level industry events, perhaps the three topics most often discussed are start-ups, innovation and entrepreneurship. In other words, as young Hongkongers keep complaining about low-pay entry-level jobs, many are striving to become their own bosses.

I was recently invited by Junior Achievement Hong Kong, a non-profit organisation that promotes entrepreneurship among youth, to sit in a start-up programme as an adviser for some students at King's College. Before our first meeting, I thought all the teenagers wanted were a couple of hours of chit-chat and fun. I was wrong.

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I was impressed by how well informed they were about the latest technology trends, such as Facebook's virtual reality headset Oculus Rift, and they wanted to invent their own version. The students are clearly ambitious, and being ambitious is a key part of entrepreneurship.
This month, many fresh Hong Kong graduates applied for an employment-oriented training programme launched by Google and its local partners, including 40 major employers across the city. Those who join the "Google Ignite" programme can be the future masters of digital marketing and there are at least 80 jobs awaiting those who graduate from it. Many could eventually start their own businesses, providing digital marketing services, or launch their own social media apps.
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