Blog

By Vilde Øines Nybakken

In September the new SPIR Idélab officially opened at Nord University in Bodø. According to Bjørg Riibe Ramskjell, project leader in Engage, the aim is for it to become a natural meeting place for all students who are curious about or interested in innovation and entrepreneurship. They’ve made a creative space for students to meet up, organize events or just hang out.

“We hope the SPIR-room will be used by the students, not only for planned events. We also want it to be a low key place to hang out and meet other people with common interests”, Ramskjell says.

Events will be posted on the SPIR Facebook page, but as Ramskjell says; feel free to drop in.

A wide range of possibilities

The SPIR-room is fairly new, but there’s already a lot of ideas circulating for the usage of the room.

“Right now we’re working on furnishing the room, making it inspiring and encouraging for innovational thinking. We want to get some regular events going for students to attend on a regular basis, like the upcoming workshop on health and care the 18th october”, Ramskjell says.

Socializing is important, and low-key is a recurring expression when talking about SPIR Idélab’s future development. There’s a wide range of event possibilities: from low-key events like movie nights, just for socializing and meeting new people sharing your interests for innovation, to bigger events supported by the industry.

Project leader for Inspir project, Tom Steffensen, from Kunnskapsparken Bodø (Bodø Science Park), also emphasizes a low key approach.

“SPIR Idélab and the activities hosted here are low key and without obligations. We want to make it easier to start your own business, and motivate students to think about entrepreneurship”, he says.

Students, startups and subject teachers gathered

SPIR Idélab is located in Mørkvedgården in Bodø, with the student organization START Nord and Engage. There could not have been a better location for it.

“Everyone from the entrepreneurship and innovation divison at Nord University is located in Mørkvedgården. SPIR Idélab is in the same hallway as the faculty and teachers, so it’s a short way for the students to get support and guidance”, Ramskjell says.

Not only is SPIR Idélab a meeting place; it will also be possible for startups to rent office space at the loft, which is meant to be a student incubator. A great opportunity for students with a startup business.

“It’s low-threshold, and we would love to have more startups moving in to “Loftet” (the Loft). There’s a startup planning to moving in, and other student startups in need of office spaces should not hesitate to get in touch”, he says.

To get in touch with Engage about SPIR, the student incubator “Loftet” or other things regarding startup activities, please contact Cecilie Haukland or Bjørg Riibe Ramskjell

By Silje Olsen and Live Eriksen Larsen

Wednesday October 18th 2017 six students from several faculties met for a workshop arranged by Inspir, Engage and Start Nord in collaboration. Some of the students already had experience working in nursing or health related jobs, others just shared an interested in entrepreneurship. They were given tasks to find ideas for new inventions or services that would solve problems related to the themes health and welfare.

Workshops like these can be fruitful to create new ideas for progressing work in for example hospitals and nursing homes in Norway – specially considering the growth of life expectancy and the aging population.

The success story of Minmemoria

The workshop was led by senior advisor in Kunnskapsparken Bodø, Tom Steffensen. He is also Project manager for the Inspir project in collaboration with Nord. Inspir is one of three partners working together to make a vibrant environment for student entrepreneurs at Nord university. Through Inspir he leads a series of workshops at SPIR, to encourage students in venture creation. He is pleased with the event.

“Our goal is to help the students bring new ideas forward, with new products or services. We have a good example of a former student who has started her own business in the healthcare sector, Johanne Viksaas. With help from SPIR Idélab and others, she took an idea further and created the company Minmemoria“, Steffensen says.

Viksaas is one of the more successful examples of people who have started their career at SPIR Idélab. Today she has six employees and is expanding her company. She also has received venture capital from local investors.

Hoping for a new selling idea

Minmemoria have created an app which is very easily explained as a Facebook for dementia patients. The family adds information about the patient so that the people at the nursing home can get to know the patient better.

Steffensen wouldn’t mind if an equally good business idea would come up again.

“It’s up to the students themselves if they want to go further on with their ideas. If so, we are here to help them forward with them and the development of their business. The workshop is also a great arena for the students who want to compete in the business plan competition Venture Cup as well. Venture Cup is a competition arranged by the student organization Start Nord”, he says.

Several idea pitches were introduced

The six participants in the workshop were divided in two groups. The ideas for new inventions were many. Eventually the students were given a limit of thirty words to explain each business idea.

At SPIR there will be more workshops where students can work with business ideas in several fields. This was the second workshop this fall, and the upcoming events at SPIR will be posted at the facebook page of SPIR idélab.

By Nicoline Saarisilta Bergh

Last week, Nicoline and Solveig, two students from NTNU School of Entrepreneurship (NSE) traveled to Germany. The two entrepreneurs are co-founders of Exero Technologies, a startup that develops sports equipment for people with disabilities. Along with team Exero, another startup from NSE joined, Klaus from Dignum. Dignum is developing a tool to make intimate tasks easy to manage on your own if you have a disability. They traveled to Düsseldorf to participate in the world’s largest fair for rehabilitation and care, called Rehacare.

Some of the great things about this fair is the opportunity to meet distributors from all around the world. Germany is the leading country for assistive technology – if you make it here, you can make it anywhere. At the fair they met former NSE-student, Eirik Medbø, cofounder of AssiTech, who participated at the fair with their distributor in Germany.

It was a great experience for the young founders, who hopefully will exhibit here next year. Another reason for traveling to Germany was to experience how German students learn, teach, and experience entrepreneurship and innovation. Nicoline and Solveig reached out to the WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management, a well-known and high rated business school in Vallendar near Koblenz.

The goal for this trip was to find inspiration for Engage and see what could potentially be implemented in Norway. IdeaLab! is an annual conference led and organized by the students of WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management. Nicoline and Solveig participated as Young Founders, and had the opportunity to meet other likeminded people. Networking was also a big part of the program, and we got in contact with many interesting founders and young professionals. The program was filled with interesting speeches, workshops, pitchbattles, and speeddating with investors.

Team Exero had the opportunity to date 8 investors within an hour. In other words – an efficient and unique chance to start building a network with investors in an early stage. The speakers came from companies like AngelList, Amazon, Singularity University and Germany’s version of Shark Tank. This event could beneficially be organized by Engage in the future. An event that gathers both students, young founders, series entrepreneurs, investors and sponsors for a weekend of innovative thinking. By this, we challenge Engage to be inspired by IdeaLab – and take it to the next level in Trondheim, Norway.

UKA is one of Norway’s biggest cultural festival and primarily run by volunteering students in Trondheim. For the first time, an event dedicated to innovation was incorporated in the festival program: UKA Technology Conference.

By Ingvild Forseth

UKA is one of Norway’s biggest cultural festival and primarily run by volunteering students in Trondheim. For the first time, an event dedicated to innovation was incorporated in the festival program: UKA Technology Conference.

The theme of the conference was “Innovation for a Sustainable Future”. The impact UKA has on students and the city of Trondheim is remarkable. The festival has been arranged since 1917. It serves as a unique meeting place for the visitors and the 1700 volunteering students.

Engage is pleased to see that UKA puts a spotlight on the need of innovation for the better. The conference was a six hour long event, starting from 12 o’clock on the 16th of October. It found place in UKAs great concert tent, in which artists such as Jay-Z and Calvin Harris has put on unforgettable shows. A number of inspirational speakers had been invited to the event.

The future is already here

One of the big buzzwords of 2017 is blockchain. Co-founder of the company Blockchangers, Oskar Åslund, addressed blockchain technology as one solution to many of UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

“A real rockstar scene”, called Åslund from the stage during his talk.

The conference started off with talks devoted to artificial intelligence and the edtech revolution. For this purpose, senior manager in Accenture Artificial Intelligence, Rumman Chowdhury, had been flown in from San Francisco. The use of artificial intelligence in the media industry and the transport industry was introduced by representatives from Aftenposten and NSB, respectively. The speakers held a high standard and were indeed successful in convincing that “the future is already here”.

The headliner for the conference was the co-founder and CEO of Kickstarter, Yancey Strickler. He gave an inspirational talk about the philosophy of Kickstarter. Strickler included advice and guidance to aspiring entrepreneurs in his presentation. Hopefully, his encouragement to be courageous and different can guide the students to take the right innovative paths. The questions Strickler received after his talk showed real enthusiasm in the audience.

1-2-3 pitch!

Enthusiasm was indeed also present in the pitch competition. Prior to the event, students had been urged to apply for participation in a pitch competition. The prize at stake was 25 000 kroner. The competition was in collaboration with Spark NTNU, one of the partners of Engage.

Four finalists had been picked out and mentored by Spark in order to give the best possible pitch. The mentoring from Spark certainly paid off, as all the finalists represented themselves impressively on the stage.

The range of the four ideas was wide. NårgeSol wants to make renewable energy more accessible with curtains of solar panels.Workzilla pitched the idea of a platform for reserving work spaces at bars and cafes. Arveng Technologies aims at developing more intuitive ways to control machines, starting off with a glove to control a drone. The winner of the competition was EasyIntervals. EasyIntervals wants to give you the aids for achieving more efficient interval training.

An event such as UKA Technology Conference is of great value to student startups. COO and pitcher for Arveng Technologies, Moina Medbøe Tamuly, told us about what it is like behind the scenes.

“I heard about this event through my contacts in Spark. The preparation for the pitch through Spark has been really good. We are using this event to give ourselves some publicity, by posting our attendance here on social media and offering a live stream. The conference is a nice opportunity to present oneself to the world”, said Tamuly.

Cool exhibitors

It is indisputable that the pitchers got to show themselves off at UKA Technology Conference. In addition to the great stage, the event included an exhibition area for technology companies, student organizations and startups. This gave rise to a constant flow of people visiting the event throughout the day.

Ascend NTNU is a student organization within the field of aerial robotics. They showed off one of their drones in the exhibition area.

“There are many cool exhibitors here, and the organization of the event is good. There is sort of an “hyped” atmosphere”, proclaimed Kim Borgen, a student from Ascend NTNU.

Big companies such as Statoil, Accenture and TrønderEnergi were also present. A representative from TrønderEnergi addressed the location of the conference as a great asset.

“Think about the potential of having a technology conference only 100 metres from the 10 000 students at Gløshaugen. For everyone promoting technology, it is of great interest to come that close to the students”, said senior project leader Bernhard Kvaal from TrønderEnergi.

Hopefully, the location of the conference will help UKA Technology Conference become a lasting tradition.

By Felix Seifert

Many people think that the construction industry is a conservative one with a focus on manual labor and lacking in innovation and digital technology. “Together with the NTNU Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and buildingSMART Norway, we want to change that picture.” explains Frode Halvorsen, Engage project leader of Engage.

From the 13th to 15th October 2017 we will be hosting the LivingLab : BIM & IoT Hackathon. The event will occur at FRAM, NTNU. As a student, you will meet key industry players and interact with the newest technology to create future solutions for a sustainable and technology driven environment.

“We see the contours of the digital shift the construction industry is taking right now and believe that the construction industry will have taken even more of digital shift by in 2025. We will see a transformation to a digital, competitive and sustainable construction industry”, states Carl Thodesen, Head of Department of Civil and Transport Engineering at NTNU.

To meet this vision, there will need to be commitment driven focus on education and research within the field of the construction over its lifecyle. This will requires new ideas and innovation, we believe this is best achieved through the creative minds of our students.

“NTNU has a central position here as approximately 500 students receive an education from our institution annually. The vast majority of our students join the construction industry, therefore we believe that by providing our students with appropriate digital competence we can contribute to that positive change”, says Thodesen.

Innovative education

The digital and technological revolution is upon us. If the construction industry should manage to go through this restructuring process, implementation models and contract standards have to be made in such way that they substantiate the digital processes and not the other way around. In addition to this, we need to focus on the technology also in the early stages in our projects. Roles and the culture within the industry will change radically in the coming years. We have to turn away from digital tools into digital processes, and from a solely focus on buildings to also focus on the technology.

Jan Myhre, Project Director Digibygg

As a supporter of student driven innovation, Engage will be expanding the mindset of each student by arranging this event. Frode Halvorsen is happy for the opportunity to participate in the development of Architecture, Engineering and Construction(AEC) Industry.

“Engage is revising the future of entrepreneurship education. The AEC-industry faces a similar change of process as we do”, says Halvorsen.

Experience and knowledge are not gained only by reading books. Engage, which is a consortium consisting of different actors, has a goal to provide activities for students in all disciplines in order to increase the number of students in higher education with entrepreneurial skills.

“LivingLab hackathon is the first project we do in collaboration with Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and building smart Norway. They are in great need of innovative ideas from the students. Competence that we want to nourish by letting the students work together”, Halvorsen explains.

As the hackathon takes place, you will take part in projects which aim to seek solutions for the building industry based on technology and digital trends. A jury of building instructors will announce the best project at the end, with a prize of 10 000 NOK.

We welcome all students at NTNU

This is the start of building an innovation based digital construction community at NTNU and we look forward to seeing you at Living lab Hackathon from the 13th to 15th October. Your help is needed, especially those of you with some knowledge and experience with computing, modeling and programming.

You can join as a single or in groups of three to five person. For more information, contact Frode Halvorsen: frode.halvorsen@ntnu.no

Registrate for the hackathon here.

By Engage

Link to registration here.

Time Schedule

Fredag 13.10

17.00 : Registration

17.30 : Welcome (Carl Thodesen + Praktisk Frode Halvorsen)

18.00 : Presentation Digitalt Veikart (Lars Christian Christensen)

18.20 : Presentation Digibygg (Jan Myhre)

18.40 : Presentation Teknologibygget (Håvard Sommerseth?)

19.00 : Presentation Novelda (Marius Lind Volstad)

19.30 : Group formation and ideation together with the partners

00.00 : Doors closing

Lørdag 14.10

09.00 : Breakfast and official start of day #2

10.00 – 12.00 : Available experts

12.00 : Lunch

13.00 : Idea presentation with input from the rest

14.00 – 16.00 : Available experts

16.00 : Dinner

00.00 : Doors closing

Søndag 15.10

09.00 : Breakfast and official start of day #3

12.00 : Lunch

13.00 : Possible input from the experts and parnters

16.00 : Presentations in front of the rest and the jury

17.00 : Dinner with announcemt of the winner team

19.00 : The End

What you should/could bring

• Laptop
• Good mood *
• Your own Raspberry Pi, Arduino, other dev kits, sensors etc.

* required

What we will provide

• All neccesary data and models from Technoloigbygget
• Sensordata fra the Novelda sensors placed at Technologibygget
• Raspberry Pi`s and Novelda Xethru radars to play with during the weekend
• Food and soft drinks through the entire weekend *
• An uniqe event and possibility to meet some interesting companies and other students
• The possibility to walk away with 10.000.- NOK

By Engage

SPIR Idélab is the new space for student entrepreneurship at Nord University. Located in Mørkvedgården, in immediate proximity to the entrepreneurship faculty, SPIR is an arena for students who engage in innovation and entrepreneurship. Here the students can gather for informal meetings, and organize smaller events with a focus on innovation and entrepreneurship. SPIR is a space for student entrepreneurs to hang out and work from, and where they also can receive advice from faculty on their entrepreneurial projects. In connection to SPIR, we are building a student incubator where student entrepreneurs can work from an inspiring environment.

Spir idelab on Facebook