Young entrepreneurs have been urged to be creative but cautions in terms of their business plans and career goals. It is easy to achieve great heights in every business field or plan once they take their time to plan and make sure that they have a fair knowledge of what they want to do and what it will take to achieve it, they have been advised. These were echoed by the various speakers who took turns to educate participants at the ‘Festival of Ideas’, an international conference on information under the theme, ‘Dominating the World with Your Ideas’ at the Accra International Conference Centre Wednesday. The two-day conference, a rebrand of ‘Infopreneurship’ organised by Albert and Comfort Ocran of Legacy and Legacy was aimed at sharpening the entrepreneurial minds of participants and also give them simple tools of achieving their desired business ideas and plans. The first day, August 17, saw CEO of Combert Impressions, Albert Ocran and the main speaker, Mavis Isibor, CEO of POISE Nigeria, taking participants through topics including partnership and proposal writing. On the second day, participants were taken through various lectures on how to develop and implement business ideas and sourcing finance for a business idea. These were presented by Joel Nattey, CEO of Origin 8; Theresa Ayoade, Executive Director of Charterhouse; and Daniel Aseidu, CEO of Zenith Bank. There was an interactive session where participants asked follow-up questions on the presentations given. In an interview with Myjoyonline.com, one of the speakers, Daniel Aseidu, blamed the difficulty faced by people planning to start a business on poorly written business proposals. “Most of the time, people don’t put better proposal together and even when they put a proposal together, the proposal don’t add up. Sometimes the financial bit...is not convincing enough,” he said. He advised applicants to put together compelling proposal. “Going forward, people should learn to put proposals together to convince financiers and financial institutions,” proving that they will get their money back. Contrary to perceptions that the bank is the only avenue to obtain funds to start a business, Mr Alfred Aseidu said there are other avenues to obtain funds and that it is very expensive to go to the bank for funds to start a business. The concluding part of the conference, scheduled for Wednesday evening, will focus on; Getting Your Strategy Right and Dominating the World with Your Ideas both to be presented by Martyn Mensah, Executive Director of Strat-Afrique Development and Dr Mensah Otabil, CEO of Otabil and Associates. Story by Ernest Dela Aglanu/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana