Listening in on the President's Entrepreneurship Summit

This week, the president unveils his plan for creating peace between the U.S. and Islamic nations. Primary weapon? Entrepreneurship.

Economic opportunity means less unrest, poverty, and less of a jihadi breeding ground overseas, the theory goes. While some U.S. entrepreneurs might wish the president was holding a summit to address domestic barriers to entrepreneurial business growth...you've got to admit fostering financial stability worldwide is a good idea, too.

To see what can be done to help ignite entrepreneurial efforts abroad, President Barack Obama holds a Summit on Entrepreneurship today and tomorrow in Washington, D.C., with the goal of learning how to better connect businesses and nonprofits here and in Muslim communities. A preview:

The press room for the summit doesn't have much about American delegates to the summit, but the international visitors sound interesting, and they're from all over...more than 50 nations including Indonesia, Brunei, Nigeria, and Malaysia. A mix of entrepreneurs and nonprofit executives in microfinance and other business-support areas are on the guest list.

While the summit is being held, dozens of "partner events" will also take place around DC, hosted mostly by American entrepreneurship and international-cooperation nonprofits. So if you're in the area but didn't get an invite, there are some other places you might be able to drop by and weigh in on the topic. Also implicated -- the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which has teamed with the U.S. Commerce Department's International Trade Administration to focus on seeing how entrepreneurial efforts can stimulate economic growth worldwide. See more about the summit and the Kauffman-Commerce partnership at entrepreneurship.gov.

If this is like previous Obama summits, there'll be a way to view it online, through Facebook or some other social media, but they tend to announce it last-minute. You can get connected to summit news here.