From the 17th till the 22nd of November 2009 entrepreneurs and future entrepreneurs throughout the whole World gathered together to celebrate the Global Entrepreneurship Week. For one week, millions of young people around the world were challenged to embrace innovation, imagination, and creativity. Throughout this week students, educators, entrepreneurs, business leaders, employees, and many others have participated in a range of activities, from lectures on entrepreneurship, to business idea pitches, competitions and network gatherings.

Together, the University of Leiden, the Delft University, and the RSM Erasmus University Rotterdam hosted the Holland Entrepreneurship Week. Last week several events have been organized by the three universities to inspire, connect, and stimulate students to get entrepreneurial and become the next wave of future entrepreneurs. The goals of this week were to facilitate them with the necessary knowledge, skills and networks needed to act up on the opportunities to grow sustainable future enterprises.

Mick Walvisch (ULURU|Beagle) was invited to the kick off. At the headquarters of YESDelft incubator 80 students from Delft, Leiden, and Rotterdam gathered to participate the creative session. The participants were challenged finding an innovative business idea which could be introduced on the market. It was their opportunity to find a great business idea! To inspire and give these young future entrepreneurs a boost to get started, Mick was invited to give an inspirational lecture on creative thinking! Mick told the students that every innovation is built up on a good idea that solves a problem. By solving a problem you create value. Therefore the core essence of a fruitful idea is that it has to create value. Mick challenged the students with real world examples to leave behind their academic mindset and expose them to the ULURU|Beagle philosophy to entrepreneurship.

After this inspirational lecture, the participants started with their creative workshop, in which they were divided into small groups. Mick was assigned as a facilitator to help and guide the students through the process of inspiration and idea generation to the development of real time business cases.

Throughout the day Uluru|Beagle let the students experience, breathe, and experiment with the ULURU/Beagle Trinity and hopefully inspired the students to unleash their ideas to create and grow future sustainable enterprises.

text & photos: Thijs Markusse

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Hit the bulls eye
Based on these Insights, we write ‘Promises’ that are intended to fulfill the consumers’ drives and desires. We then proceed with consumers to check whether the Promises we wrote indeed hit the ‘bulls eye’.

Reason to Believe
The Insights may be spot-on, and the corresponding ‘Promises’ highly appealing, distinctive, unique, competitive… but, why should I believe you? The ‘Reason to Believe’ will articulate the evidence that supports your bold ‘Promise’.

The result
The result is a concept that triggers the consumer to say: ‘Yes, I recognize this’, ‘this is me’ (Insight), ‘I want this’ (Promise), ‘I believe this’ (Reason to Believe).

Nothing is so powerful…

“…nothing is so powerful as an insight into human nature, what compulsions drive a man, what instincts dominate his action, even though his language so often camouflages what really motivates him. For if you know these things about a man you can touch him at the core of his being.” (Bill Bernbach, American advertising guru).

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Act green
Captain Rob built his ship – which is fifteen metres long and seven metres tall – in five years using recycled materials such as popsicle sticks.

He did this together with some five thousand young students. He received support from an ice cream manufacturer that donated surplus popsicle sticks and a company offering 2,5 tons seawater proof glue. In addition to that, people from all over the world sent used popsicle sticks to McDonald.

A nice way to shift from thinking green to acting green. Or, as McDonald put it: “I want to show people what we can do with the stuff we throw out every day. Kids pick up the popsicle sticks, let’s build something really cool with it.”

Sailing to Florida
The captain wants to sail his eco friendly ship to England and then cross the Atlantic. The goal is to take the same route the vikings once used and finally arrive at Key West in Florida.

Captain Rob has an obvious affinity with popsicle sticks. In the past, he built a replica of the Zeven Provincien using 17,888 popsicle sticks. Later, in 2003, he built a ship using 370,000 popsicle sticks. McDonald has already made several attempts at crossing the Channel to England but each time he was forced to abort his mission, amongst others because of heavy storms.

Water speed record
However, Captain Rob is not about to give up and is already making plans for the future. One of his plans is to be the first to sail a viking ship up the Thames. He also wants to set a water speed record with a different vessel equipped with an eco-friendly propulsion system. “I want to do that when this dream is done and the boat sold.”

Like ULURU|Beagle, Rob believes that nothing is impossible. “You can do anything. If you can think it, can dream it, you can do it.” ULURU|Beagle wishes captain Rob a safe journey. Going green on a beautiful blue ocean.

More efficient and cleaner electricity
ULURU|Beagle is a big fan of innovative green concepts, which is one of the reasons our reporters set out on an eco friendly electric scooter. We are also working on several products and services that help reduce our daily energy consumption.

Stay tuned for more news on our green innovations.