I was in Eindhoven today for the great EVP program (20 young entrepreneurs from 4 European technical universities spent two weeks on four campuses developing their projects). I had two inspiring moments: 1st the mayor of Eindhoven had a great speech about the importance of innovation and entrepreneurship. 2nd we had a meeting of 20+ people debating about how to foster entrepreneurship in universities.
The mayor of #Eindhoven Rob van Gijzel @rvangijzel welcoming our European entrepreneurs! pic.twitter.com/RIYoxjXWRs
— EVP Munich (@EVPMunich) 25 Septembre 2015
Eindhoven’s efforts for entrepreneurship and innovation
The mayor of Eindhoven, Rob van Gijzel, explained that Philips had been nearly everything for Eindhoven for decades (jobs of course, schools, hospitals, PSV…) but a lot of the jobs have been delocalized, and Philips has struggled. He mentioned that the life expectancy of Fortune 1000 companies has gone from 70 years to 12 years (these are notes so I may be wrong with my recollection of facts, but the spirit was it) and the life expectancy of a product is 2 years.
So as a mayor, it is his mission to think about the future, not the present only. Eindhoven still strives because it has NXP and ASML (Spin-off from Philips), because they have the largest Samsung R&D center outside of Korea, and an antenna of the Singularity University. Rob van Gijzel unusually knows a lot about technology for a politician! Maybe it’s because it is Eindhoven… and Eindhoven is putting a lot of energy and money in universities, accelerators, start-ups and the unique high-tech campus Eindhoven (www.hightechcampus.com) which hopefully will create a lot of high value jobs. Big established companies, SMES, start-ups and universities seem to work together in the same direction. I am sure it is not perfect, but the effort is impressive!
Eurotech about Entrepreneurship
My second moment of inspiration was during a meeting of Eurotech about entrepreneurship. For once, it was not about the usual start-ups vs. SMEs, fast growth vs. controlled growth, but we had a great discussion about how to really help students interested in start-ups, about what is important, exposure to or teaching of entrepreneurship,
Just a few notes:
“early on you find inspiration, you are interested and you go where the crazy people are” … “it was the thing to do” …“I was an entrepreneur because my mother pushed me to be responsible and independent, then I tried, and failed twice, and then succeeded once”.
It is a long term effort, you teach, you expose, you inspire, and “you infect them with the virus” with possibly a long incubation. But should we do it early or late, compulsory or elective, filter the good entrepreneurs or expose/teach everyone…
“You need to teach entrepreneurship outside of the class…”
So you need a friendly ecosystem, where the university has its role (unclear which exactly, but it has one!) “Young entrepreneurs should know they do not need to pay for lawyers, they need to find friends who are lawyers, or who have a legal expertise.” You need to break the barriers, help people meet and find the people they need, also break the regional barriers because regional support focuses on local development, which is not necessarily the best friend of an entrepreneur who needs to think globally. Ecosystems have to be open, people need to travel, where the talent and money are
So we agreed there was not a general agreement on the strategic way of fostering entrepreneurship…though it is very important…