In the spring of 2018, Gründebrakka came as a new addition to the innovation environment at NTNU.
By Rebecca Amalie Skogø
Gründerbrakka’s purpose is to provide work space for the most ambitious student driven startup companies at NTNU. As of early 2019, 16 startups and over 60 active students and alumni are all fully committed to their entrepreneurial projects while staying at Gründerbrakka.
You don’t need fancy facilities to stimulate innovation
Gründerbrakka is meant to function as a transition between being a student and a full time entrepreneur. Previously, startups had to rent offices or move between group rooms at NTNU – now there is a designated space where they can stay in up to a year.
Jonas Hyllseth Ryen, who is in charge of operations at Gründerbrakka, tells us that since each startups is granted a limited amount of time in the working space, there are expectations that each startup have a strong focus on achievements, results and growth. Despite these requirements, it doesn’t seem to scare applicants away. The initiative is so popular that there is a waiting list to get an office in the current space. There isn’t enough room to house everyone.
We at Gründerbrakka are convinced that majority of new innovations must come from students, and that’s why we need to focus on this type of environment. Without a place to be, it becomes more cumbersome to start your own business and as a result fewer will succeed. It is very rewarding to be able to help build that kind of innovation environment at NTNU
Jonas Hyllseth Ryen
A more holistic representation
One of the many things that makes Gründerbrakka exciting, is their attention on creating an engaging space while sharing information across industries. Even though each startup works by themselves, there is a sense of community within the community. “There is a lot of room to share knowledge. Being open to share what you know is one of the criteria of getting access to our facilities. The threshold to stop by someone’s office or to have a talk over lunch is nearly non-existent. We even have an information bank over what each person in the office is good at so the others can make use of them”, says Ryen.
When all comes down to it, it was the students that came to Engage requesting a place where everyone could have a chance to get in. “This is unique in Norway, especially considering how this has emerged as a collaboration between the institution NTNU and the students. It’s clearly an enormous measure to make it more attractive to focus on innovation during our studies. With Gründerbrakka, the entrepreneurial environment at NTNU has become more holistic since we’re here for companies in all phases”, Ryen explains.
During the upcoming years, Gründerbrakka wants to increase its offers of counseling and services while helping to make even more students dare to start for themselves.
One of the students from NTNU School of Entrepreneurship, Jonas Aakenes, recently visited the University of Genova to see how they managed the entrepreneurship education at the school.
by Jonas Aakenes
Start Up Innovative
Master students at the University of Genova is offered a venture creation program called Start Up Innovative. The program lasts for only two to three months, and the end goal is to help and encourage students into starting their own companies. The program is a quite new initiative, previously only offered two times, so the university is still experimenting on how to make the program better than the times before.
The program consist of 15-20 students from different backgrounds and fields of study, where they contribute with their own ideas while being offered about 120 hours of lectures and workshops with experts and other startups. At the end of these months, the students then write their business model and plan to be evaluated by experts and professors.
One of the startups that started through this program is Cynomys 7. They deliver data services for IoT solutions, aimed both towards farming and office spaces. Other examples are to be found on their Youtube channel 8.
Other organizations in collaboration with Start Up Innovative
In the Genova area, there are a lot of different helpdesks and startup incubators where one can seek help. Basic information and help is possible to get through Confindustria, which is a professional association that offers help to students that want to start a company. If the idea is based on university science, IIT helps with patenting and the technology aspect of the startup. In addition, here are different incubators in close collaboration with the university, like Wylab and BIC Liguria.
So what does the students think about starting their own company?
I talked with some of the students during my week in Genova, and the way to think about startups in Italy is quite different than in Norway. Most students are concerned about getting a job, and they often search for jobs outside Italy. I found out that most of the students didn’t have the confidence to start something for themselves, and if they wanted to – they didn’t know of any organizations to help them, unlike what we have in Norway with initiatives such as START NTNU and Spark* NTNU. But to my understanding, creating your own business in Italy is hard.
One of the few students that actually started her own company was financed by her family before they were even able to get a loan from a bank, to be able to get income for the company. Even though her company already had won awards and financial contributions. In general, it was quite eye-opening that the differences are that big from Trondheim to Genova. But the great thing now is that the University of Genova is really looking at this as an exciting possibility and is experimenting with what they can do to make it easier – Start Up Innovative will be exciting to follow in the next few years.
Last fall the newest addition to the NTNU innovation family was added.
By Erik Klevar
Last fall the newest addition to NTNUs innovation family was added. The innovation lab at Medisinteknisk forskningssenter (medicine-technical research centre) at St. Olavs Hospital is run by DRIV NTNU and the faculty of medicine and health science at NTNU. DRIV is a student organization that aims to create collaboration between health professionals and technologists. While the innovation lab was officially opened in November of last year the organization DRIV has been open for business since December 2017.
Working together on prototypes
With the year fast approaching easter, it was time for an event that sought to introduce the students at the campuses Øya and Gløshaugen to each other and give them an arena to collaborate across their fields of studies. Some thirteen students from disciplines such as cybernetics, electrical systems and medicine were grouped in cross disciplinary teams for the workshop. The workshop is called Health-Tech Challenge and is a collaboration between several actors at NTNU with the Operation Room of Tomorrow (Fremtidens Operasjonsrom).
Milena Egiazarian, is a Medicine student and the leader of NTNU DRIV. She also co-founded the organization.
“It all began when I talked to a friend of mine who’s also interested in research, medicine and technology. We saw that while the campus at Gløshaugen was a big innovation hub we lacked the same infrastructure at Øya. We also missed talking with people outside our campus. Through another friend in Spark* we got in touch with more people in other student societies, word of mouth spread the idea and DRIV opened up”, says Egiazarian.
What exactly is going on here tonight?
“Health-Tech Challenge is a workshop arranged in collaboration with Fremtidens Operasjonsrom (the Operating Room of the Future , FOR). The participants get to work in cross study teams with real problems doctors face in the operating theater. The students are presented with the problems from FOR and given two weeks before they get to present their solution. This year the groups even made prototypes! We arrange the workshop to provide a gathering for students with interest in health tech innovation, and also to give them the opportunity to create a network. We hope that the participants get a glimpse of what it means to work in teams with people from other fields of study. Last but not least we want to give the health professionals the opportunity to share their problems and get ideas for new solutions”.
The students were asked to provide solutions to two problems presented by faculty members at NTNU. One of the problems encountered by medicine professionals today is that they might miss the intended trajectory when boring in bones. Boring through bones is for example used when placing hip prosthesis or when replacing the bone from the pelvis to the leg, and could lead to the angle of the leg being out of order and giving patients a limp or a painful life.
As in any challenge a winning team was announced on the 18th of March, two weeks after starting. Four teams presented their solutions to a panel consisting of a representative from FOR, one representative from Engage, one representative from NTNU Health and one alumni from NTNU School of Entrepreneurship. The winners were Kerar Zayiadi (cybernetics), Abir Al-Dekany (medicine) and Håvard Ulsaker (medicine). They were praised for their simple-to-use solution that makes it easier for orthopedic surgeons to operate prosthetic implants.
Kerar, Abir and Håvard won the challenge
Kerar, pictured on the far left gave Engage some of his thoughts and comments about his experience with DRIV and the innovation lab at Øya.
Why did you come here tonight, Kerar?
“I have a feeling that everyone at Gløshaugen wants to get the next big idea. I participated because I wanted to hear what kind of problems the professionals struggled with. Everyone in cybernetics want to work on innovative project and I’m no exception”, Kerar explained.
What did you learn from the workshop?
“I never knew how tough an orthopedic surgeon is with hammers and chisels on their patients. I thought that the workshop would have some interesting projects to work on and I’ve learned a lot about orthopedic procedures. We started out with an idea of what we were going to do and compared our solutions to other products on the market. We tried to keep it simple and the approach worked”.
The panel used more than an hour to come to a conclusion but in the end the winners got their diplomas and the workshop was over for now. DRIV NTNU does not have any events planned for the remainder for the semester.
Want to know more about the innovation lab and what goes on in the innovation environment at Øya? You can visit DRIV NTNUs Facebook page here.
Together with TrønderEnergi Spark has since its inception in 2014 guided over 300 startups and over a thousand students. It is an organization driven by students which in itself is impressing considering the work they do for the startups who come searching.
Join A Startup Night, or JASUN for short, is an event that focuses on – you guessed it – recruiting people for startups. Spark chooses ten to twelve startups who will get their two minutes in the spotlight in order to convince potential candidates in the room. More or less 100 people showed up from every corner of NTNU to witness what they could be a part of and what the startups had to offer.
The night started with a personal story by Eva Røgler. The NSE student Eva Røgler shared her experiences and gave the students her perspective on life while telling us about her journey from deciding to apply NSE at 18 and then being admitted at 22.
“When I started in the 2nd year of upper second school the entrepreneur spirit took hold. I found something I loved to do, to run my own business. After that I participated in several events organized by Ungt Entreprenørskap. At one event I was introduced to NSE, got a tour of their premises and got to learn about all the exciting startups who worked there. I didn’t even know what bachelor’s degree I was supposed to take, but I knew at that time I was going for a master’s at NSE. I worked hard and targeted by doing extracurricular activities, work hard in school and joining the startup Daycloud”, Røgler says.
After the first round it was time to mingle and get some snacks. Featuring the familiar student bar and with pizza in hand the students approached those startups who sounded interesting and familiar faces talked with each other. A percentage of people were known figures in the student innovation ecosystem, but it was nice to see several new faces in the crowd. We talked with Eva who gave us her take on JASUN.
You’re currently a student at NSE, a co-founder of Snowroller and employee of Spark. Why did you decide to take the stage tonight and share your experiences?
“It all started when some of my colleagues from Spark* encouraged me to do a talk here. I really wanted to say no because I have stage fright, but there was something in me that said yes. I thought that if I could motivate or inspire another person the night would be worth it. I realized all my efforts when I sat down to write and I really hope I did inspire someone. One thing that I focused on in my talk was to go out of your comfort zone and that’s what I did. I told myself that at least if I could go 20 minutes in front of 100 strangers at least I would be a good example and follow my own advice”.
What is so exciting about the events that Spark organize? Why should people visit and attend events like JASUN?
“Spark* exists so that more students who carry a business idea inside themselves can make it happen. JASUN is a great arena for those who are interested in what kind of startups that move around. I thought there were lots of exciting and promising startups here tonight, especially AnyTimeBed who had a super cool concept! I couldn’t believe that they are only 19 and already have a working prototype”.
Is the startup life for everyone?
“We want to give the little push that makes people at least try and fail. I hope that if someone who’s reading this is curious about the startup life, they do something about it. Send a message to Spark* or participate at events. Take a chance! It might have a bigger impact on your life than you would think”.
By Eline Vitsø Bjørnstad, Elise Maria Irgens & Kjersti Blauenfeldt Næss
We went from NTNU School of Entrepreneurship in Trondheim, Norway to Copenhagen, Denmark, to visit the incubator Refugee Entrepreneurs Denmark (RED), KPH Projects, CO:LAB and to do interviews for our master thesis. The purpose was to get a better understanding of how refugee incubators work and what services are important for entrepreneurs with a refugee background.
We worked at the co-working space
We arrived in Copenhagen early in the morning. After checking in to our hotel and after a short breakfast on the go, we went to meet the first entrepreneur from the incubator Refugee Entrepreneurs Denmark. He had invited us to his bike shop in Nørrebro in Copenhagen City Center.
After a very inspiring meeting with the fantastic entrepreneur from Syria, our journey proceeded to the Danish Refugee Council and CO:LAB, where we got a better understanding of how the Danish Refugee Council use entrepreneurship as an integration method and to create jobs.
The following day we desk-surfed at the incubator R.E.D where we worked and got to know more of the refugee entrepreneurs from R.E.D and the co-founder and CEO. We also visited KPH Projects and got a house tour in their incubator full of interesting, hard-working social entrepreneurs. The incubators are located in the same building, full of inspiring startups working to solve UNs Sustainable Development Goals. There are startups both working with local social impact projects and international.
The goal of the trip was for Engage to learn more about how other universities implement a study program in entrepreneurship, especially a VCP (Venture Creation Program). By reaching out to universities that in some way fit into the general perception of what a VCP is, we were able to book meetings with four different universities throughout the UK:
University College London
University of Cambridge
University of Buckingham
Coventry University
Throughout the trip, we found out that all universities have their own take on how running a VCP looks like, with advantages and disadvantages for all different ways to do it. Some institutions had VCPs for bachelor programs, while others had a one-year master’s degree.
Read on to learn more about our experiences at the different universities we met.
A lecture on entrepreneurship at Buckingham
UCL
For our first stop of the trip, we visited UCL. With over 41,000 students, UCL is a massive university with a big network of entrepreneurial activities and great potential for innovation. The master’s degree here were separated from the incubator facilities, due to government restrictions on the incubator building space. This meant that the incubator was more separated from the VCP students than what you see here in Trondheim, and more students from different parts of the university used the incubator space to work on their startups.
Key takeaways
UCL has a great space for office work and events, where students can sit and work in a creative environment.
The VCP at UCL is physically separated from the incubation space at two different locations, yet students use both locations for different purposes.
University of Cambridge
As one of the oldest and most prestigious education institutions in the world, we had great expectations for our visit to Cambridge University. So much great research is done at this institution, including research on new ventures and entrepreneurship.
Cambridge has previously not had a huge focus on educating and facilitating entrepreneurship in the past. Most of the technology developed are sold to larger corporations instead of becoming a spin-out from the university.
Through a two-year meeting-based masters program at Judge Business School, students spend four residential weeks at Cambridge throughout the program and work through online courses during the rest of the studies. The second year of the program is devoted to starting a new venture with support from mentors and the team that students assemble during the first year.
Key Takeaways
Cambridge is a huge university with every opportunity to expand their entrepreneurial support to aid students in pursuing new ventures.
While the support for entrepreneurial students has not been a big focus previously, it’s currently growing with multiple programs.
University of Buckingham
Buckingham is a small town with 13,000 inhabitants that is located between Cambridge and Oxford. The University of Buckingham has 1,300 students and a VCP at bachelor level where the students must start a company as part of the program. They get £5,000 pounds from the university as starting venture capital and most of the companies start by importing products from China or start projects that require less capital than the average startup.
Key takeaways
As a bachelor’s program, the average student is younger than many other studies, which changes the dynamics of the student environment. The students get closer and more frequent follow-up from the staff with the start-ups.
The University of Buckingham has a great hands-on, learning-by-doing program which forces the students to go out and develop a venture with guidance from staff and mentors.
Coventry University
For our last stop, we visited Kelly Smith and her colleagues at Coventry University. Here, the institution has both a bachelor and a master’s program in entrepreneurship.
The bachelor’s degree is a three-year course where students learn about the entrepreneurial mindset and how to develop a business. The students are not required to start a business, but they have the possibility for a “sandwich-year” where they can study abroad or build a new venture.
The master’s degree is an intensive program, where the students have limited time for extracurricular projects. The program lays the foundation needed for developing a new venture, which students have done after finishing the degree.
Key takeaways
Having both a bachelor and a master’s degree in entrepreneurship enables students to have a higher degree of flexibility in seeking education in entrepreneurship.
The students are advised to combine their studies in entrepreneurship with specialization within another field of study. (E.g. bachelor’s in computer engineering – master’s in entrepreneurship)
The Climate-KIC Journey is the world’s largest climate innovation summer school offering transformative learning and hands-on business experience.
By Rebecca Amalie Skogø
“What we now are starting to see, is that people have come to understand that we need to make some changes so we don’t completely mess up the world’s future. Big changes need to happen in business and industry, many of our current systems need to be improved, or even replaced, to become more sustainable. However, the ideas and new solutions to drive these changes have to come from somewhere”, says project manager Erik O’Donnell.
Since 2016 Engage and NTNU have been part of The Journey, Europe’s largest summer school for sustainable business ideas. Approximately 400 students from all over the world are carefully selected each year to be part of the four week program. The goal is to create new green business ideas and start a dialog about climate innovation. For 40 participants, two of these weeks will be spent with Engage in Trondheim while they develop their ideas.
The Journey in 2018
The change we need
Engage’s part in The Journey is to develop what it means to be a entrepreneur today and what role sustainability plays in the future. Today young people view innovation as a way to change society, and Engage is there to provide motivated, skilled people with the tools and the platform for green business opportunities. It is part of a necessary shift, and in this shift there is need for entrepreneurship and expertise.
The younger generations wants to do something, but what can you do? You might feel a sense of being powerless; you can’t really do what you want or you might not know how to do it. Many are often struggling, they are solving a technical problem without anyone seeing the real value of the solution. There must be cooperation between both legislation and innovation. We’re here to give people a platform so the road might be a little easier.
– Erik O’Donnell
Sustainable, but profitable
Even though sustainability is the main focus, it’s important that the ideas are viable business ventures while still maintaining a green mindset. It has to be good for the environment, economically feasible, and the market must be ready – someone actually must want to use it. If you make a sustainable product or service that nobody wants to use, it won’t be adopted, and then there’s no impact towards sustainability.
“Engage shares everything we know about business creation. We offer intensive courses in everything from business development and design thinking, to marketing, pitching and other relevant topics. We want to teach the skills that make it easier to recognize potential opportunities, with the idea that they can analyze their new ideas with both sustainability, accessibility and viability in mind”, says O’Donnell.
After the groups second week in Trondheim, the participants travel to their last destination where they will pitch their ideas in a showcase community event. They’ll receive feedback and network with other Journey teams, Climate-KIC partners, alumni and industry experts.
Marius Tuft Mathisen at NTNU won The Heizer Dissertation Award for his research within the field of entrepreneurship. .
By Frode Halvorsen
Associate Professor Marius Tuft Mathisen received The Heizer Dissertation Award at the annual Academy of Management (AOM) conference held this year in Chicago. The conference is the largest of its kind, and is the most important place of academic discussion in the management field. Mathisen is one of the few Europeans and the first Scandinavian to win the award which has been awarded since the 1970s.
Mathisen’s dissertation “The Growth of Research-Based Spin-offs: Unleashing the Value of Academic Entrepreneurship“ is based on a unique database developed by Mathisen and colleagues, which tracks the full population of new ventures established to commercialize research results from universities and research institutes in Norway. The dissertation contributes with novel perspectives on how to understand, evaluate and predict the outcome of such spin-off firms. AOM found the dissertation to be of impressive scientific quality with important implications for both practice and theory. Mathisen also got praise for extraordinary scientific craftmanship.
Marius Tuft Mathisen receives his award
A more nuanced perspective
In cooperation with a team of students at the NTNU School of Entrepreneurship, Mathisen constructed an extremely detailed data set to enable a more nuanced and complete perspective of how research-based spin-offs actually develop, grow, and perform.
– These companies are expected to create employment, economic value, and regional effects, but there was lacking knowledge about how these firms actually performed as a group. Traditionally it was common only to look at metrics such as revenue growth or survival, but these measures proved to be too superficial alone to adequately explain the growth behavior of spin-offs. Mathisen’s study was original in that it took both a combined quantitative and qualitative view on a full national population of spin-offs evaluated over a very long time period. He was able to look beyond the surface.
Valuable acquisitions while still unprofitable
Mathisen’s study shows that only a small fraction of spin-offs established represents almost all value creation.
-In contrast to other type of start-ups these companies often commercialize uncertain, innovative, and radical technology. The result is that very few succeed, but those that make it can be very important and valuable, says Mathisen.
He also found a tendency for incumbent companies to acquire the most promising spin-offs before they get grow to become large companies themselves.
-This is an important element that’s been largely overlooked so far. Some spin-offs disappear with no economic or societal impact while in reality they actually merge into larger companies. Also, there has been an assumption that spin-offs have continuous and stable growth, but this is not the case at all. For the majority of firms, growth is both discontinuous and erratic
Continue investing in science commercialization and spin-offs
Mathisen’s dissertation is important for science policy and spin-off management since the Norwegian government is investing heavily in this field through, amongst others, the FORNY program administrated by the Research Council of Norway. His study offers nuanced perspectives and tools on how to understand and evaluate this unique group of companies.
– I really hope that I have managed to illustrate that it makes sense to continue supporting science commercialization and entrepreneurship.
He currently works as the CEO at Appfarm AS, a company commercializing an innovative software technology. He also maintains a position as Associate Professor at the Faculty of Economics and the Engage Center at NTNU.
Mathisen is actively working with student entrepreneurship at the NTNU School of Entrepreneurship. He argues that students can play an important part in the success of many spin-offs.
-First class science and technology is not enough to be able to develop spin-offs successfully. These companies also need commercial and market-based expertise added to the start-up team. In this respect students and other external entrepreneurs can play important roles, says Mathisen.
For more information, contact Marius Tuft Mathisen: marius.mathisen@ntnu.no
A project bringing together world-class education institutions and practitioners from Norway, USA and India to develop knowledge that improves entrepreneurial education and its impact on society has been awarded funding through the INTPART program of the Research Council of Norway.
Entitled the Network for Engaged Entrepreneurship in Developing Economies (NEED), the project will establish a network of institutions to develop knowledge to improve entrepreneurial education and its impact on society by engaging with challenges in low and middle-income countries (LMI).
Students will have the opportunity to work on meaningful sustainability focused entrepreneurial projects of societal value under guidance from academic and subject experts. NEED will generate live projects that students from across disciplines can work on in established courses such as Experts in Teamwork (Eit) and Venture Cup as well as through targeted Summer Schools.
Through its activities, the partnership will also develop knowledge on the challenges and processes involved in starting up and scaling businesses in developing countries and on the process of entrepreneurial learning.
Key facts of the NEED project
Duration: 3 years starting January 2019
Partners:
NTNU’s School of Entrepreneurship (NSE): established in 2003 at the Department of Industrial Economics and Technology Management (IØT), NSE has a strong record of success with 50 % of the graduates working at their own startup after graduation. With the ambition of increasing the number of students with entrepreneurial skills from across different disciplines, NSE along with partners has established the SFU Engage focused on developing the knowledge and methods for imparting entrepreneurship skills to a wide range of students from across Norway and beyond.
Nord University Business School, Norway: Nord has provided courses and specializations in entrepreneurship at the Bachelor, MBA, MSc, and PhD levels since 1985 and has graduated more than 20 PhDs in entrepreneurship and innovation over the last 10 years. With innovation and entrepreneurship as a priority area, Nord offers a bachelor and master programs in business emphasizing development of entrepreneurial leaders. Further, Nord has a strong position in entrepreneurship research supporting the development of education. Nord is also a partner in SFU Engage.
Babson College, USA: Established in 1919 Babson is a world leading institution for entrepreneurship education, being ranked as the best US business programs within entrepreneurship for decades. Babson focuses on teaching students to use entrepreneurship as a force for economic and social value creation, and solve more than just business problems. Besides being at the cutting-edge of entrepreneurship research and education in general, Babson has also established the Lewis Institute and the Babson Social Innovation Lab, which focus on bringing social innovations to market. Babson College has also initiated the Babson Collaborative, which is a membership organization that brings together educational institutions seeking to build and grow entrepreneurship education for the betterment of our world.
SRISTI, India: Established in 1993, SRISTI focuses on grassroots innovations, meaning technological and institutional innovations developed by individuals and communities that may be economically disadvantaged but are knowledge rich, especially in managing their limited resources. Over the past two and half decades SRISTI been instrumental in documenting grassroots innovations in India, and supporting the innovators through early stage venture support, to scale up products and services through commercial or non-commercial channels.
TARA, India: TARA is a social enterprise set up in the year 1985 to incubate micro-enterprise based green business solutions to environmental and development challenges faced by the poor. TARA’s green technology innovations for habitat, water, energy and waste management, which deliver basic needs and generate sustainable livelihoods, have reduced poverty and rejuvenated natural ecosystems in the most backward regions of India and elsewhere. TARA has also successfully commercialized a number of these technologies and spun off a series of social enterprises.
Key Goals:
Generate entrepreneurship projects that are focused on solving challenges in LMI countries where:
Students learn entrepreneurial skills by working on these live projects
Students learn about and engage with challenges in different contexts by interacting with innovators, entrepreneurs and experts from these contexts
Project workshops where students can work directly on selected projects along with innovators and entrepreneurs from LMI countries
Summer schools where students can work on developing their own ideas for entrepreneurial solutions for selected issues in LMI countries
Integrate the NEED entrepreneurship projects into existing and new courses enabling students to earn credits. Target courses include:
Experts in Teamwork (EiT)
Venture Cup (VC)
Idea Search (Idesøk)
Research workshops focusing on the key areas of:
Knowledge on entrepreneurship processes in LMI countries
Knowledge on entrepreneurial learning
Establish future collaboration
Expected results:
Identification of 75 entrepreneurial projects for students to work on
At least 150 students receiving course credits
A new EiT village is established focusing on entrepreneurship in LMI countries. First two villages to be run in India
At least 10 joint research papers submitted for publication
At least 4 new joint project applications
For more information, contact Vivek Sinha : vivek.sinha@ntnu.no
Entrepreneurship education on site may be a long-lasting lesson; either it is a visit to a Spanish aviation company or to a Norwegian salmon farm.
By Gunn-Berit Neergård
I’m at Valencia Airport, but I am not finding myself in a stressed security queue or at an overpriced fast food restaurant. I am in a hangar. A huge building, bright and shiny – not a trace of dust anywhere. This spotless hall is the maintenance place of real airplanes. I see one small airplane used to carry water to put out forest fires. Next to it are two vehicles carrying everyday travellers like you and me from one city to the next. At the end of the line comes two military aircrafts. The scale of it all amazes me. I have only seen a location like this in TV series and action movies. This however, is not a film set. This is real life aviation business, and I am here to learn about cost structures.
Learning from a local company
Let us roll back an hour. Professor Felipe Sànchez is teaching finance and economics (Financial Mathematics and Financial accounting) at EDEM Escuela de Empresarios, and he has planned this site visit for his second grade students in the business and administration track. He is happy to introduce the speaker of the day, Vicente Soler Pérez. Vicente and Felipe met at the stock exchange 22 years ago, and have been friends ever since. Vicente is chief of analyses, planning and control in the management group of Air Nostrum. Today, he will share his insight into the cost structure of aviation business, using Air Nostrum as the example.
“This is one of the best companies in Valencia”, Felipe states. Air Nostrums strategic management and leadership impresses him. It seems to impress the students as well. During the thirty-minute bus ride to get here, the students were singing, laughing and joking. Now they focus on the lecture. Phones are stored away (in flight mode?) and the notebooks are open.
From fancy to ordinary
Vicente start his lecture with a brief introduction to the history of aviation, which began with the Wright brothers in 1903. 91 years later, Air Nostrum was founded. Their core business is domestic and international connection flights to and from Madrid. Vicente explains how the aviation business has experienced a tremendous growth the past decades:
“Forty years ago, only one or two in this room would have experienced a flight, and they dressed up to go to the airport. Today, I have to ask how many who has never travelled by plane?”, Vicente says while he looks at the audience, but no one raises their hand.
“As flying has become commonplace, the business models in aviation has changed. Low-cost airline companies have created changes that has gained the whole industry, by stripping the chain of costs to produce a flight ticket. Charging the customer for food and drinks, seating and luggage, may be an irritant to travellers, but in reality, they avoid paying for stuff they don’t want or need”, says Vicente. “Anyway, what is unquestionable is that the low-cost companies have created the need of flying.”
Aviation business models
Vicente further explains the strategic choice of routes. Some actors typically have a “hub-and-spoke” business model, where every flight connects to an airline hub. This is often common for regional airlines, connecting cities in close proximity of the hub. Air Nostrum have two hubs, one in Valencia and one in Madrid. Airline companies can also chose a point-to-point business model, often serving travellers in all parts of the world.
There are plenty of costs when owning a fleet. Maintenance of airplanes requires personnel that is specialized in each vessel. While Air Nostrum have two different types of vessels, Ryanair as an example, runs their entire business on only one model. This has its limitations, but it is a huge advantage that all pilots can operate all vessels, and that every mechanic can do maintenance on the entire fleet. When buying parts, these companies also get the best prices, ordering huge volumes of the same components.
Learning on site
What professor Felipe does by hosting this trip is to facilitate an energetic learning environment for his students. He is turning an ordinary finance lecture into what will become a vivid memory. I can tell, because I have been there myself. Five years ago, I enrolled in the NTNU School of Entrepreneurship, and during this master’s program, we experienced several site visits. I remember each of these lectures as days filled with joy, curiosity, amazement, and engagement. As an example, one of our assignments in “Industrial Marketing and International Business” was to analyse the international structure and innovation activities of Marine Harvest, one of the largest seafood companies in the world. This Norwegian company has 13 233 employees in 25 countries, and is the largest producer of Atlantic salmon globally. Visiting the salmon farms of Marine Harvest at beautiful Frøya was a trip to remember. We saw salmon fed in fish cages, and tasted its cousin’s afterwards, as we had lunch with the administration of the company. The field trip consisted of images, sounds, smells and flavours that fuelled my motivation, my interest and drive to understand the industry.
Learning that sticks
A lecture without a site visit would also be educational, learning from a real company. However, being there, sensing the waves carrying the boat next to a fish cage, or gazing up at the huge wings of an airplane in maintenance – this fuels learning. Site visits like these are entrepreneurship education based on real life experiences. My experiences. As well as the business students’ experiences. They see themselves in the greater picture by being in this maintenance hangar. They study the airplanes and ask detailed questions about what they see. They relate to the mechanics working on top of the wings, and wonder what it is like to be a pilot. They are using all senses to examine their curriculum, thus the learning experiences stick. Just ask them in the future! I am positive these entrepreneurs-to-be will remember the day they learned about cost structure under the wings of an airplane. At least, so will I.
Gunn-Berit Neergård is a PhD Candidate at Engage. Normally, she is working out of NTNU, however the following two weeks she is “desk surfing” at EDEM Escuela de Empresarios, a business school in Valencia, Spain.
Do you want to learn more about the schools mentioned in this blogpost? Here are their web sites:
