University of Twente Archives

VentureLab Twente for high-ambition techno starters !

published on December 9, 2008 by Remo Knops

If you want to start your own high-tech, high-growth business, than VentureLab Twente might be a good way to realize your ambitions as entrepreneur. VentureLab Twente is a combined project of: (1) University of Twente; (2) Nikos, Dutch Institute for Knowledge Intensive Entrepreneurship; (3) Saxion Hogescholen; (4) Kennispark (“Knowledge Park”) Twente.

Yesterday VentureLab Twente organized a meeting on the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, to present the concept, the model and underlying rules & assumptions. The figure below provides a schematic overview of the design of VentureLab Twente.

design venturelab twente

Nikos researcher Dr. Constantinidus provides a nice summary of Venture Lab Twente on his Weblog:

The mission of the Lab is to help “ techno-starters” and knowledge-intensive businesses to enter the market and succeed. … At VentureLab Twente, entrepreneurs work in teams to develop a successful high-tech company. Participants receive support from academics, consultants and students from the entrepreneurial University of Twente and the Saxion Universities of Applied Sciences Seminars by internationally renowned trainers, carefully planned personal coaching, access to newly developed technologies, access to a network of international companies and last but not least access to venture capital are some of the elements of the VLT approach. [ref02]

The high ambition of the program is reflected by the expected outcomes, among which the start of 210 companies (58%) -including 30 high potential companies (8%)- from the 360 participants at the start of the program. Furthermore the expected results after 5 years are 157 companies (75%) who have survived, including 15 high-growth companies (50%). During the meeting we had a discussion about this high percentages. [ref03]

However the “entrepreneurial” University of Twente has more than 25 years of experience in this field, and there are parts of the VentureLab program already running in a stand-alone setting. The percentages are therefore based on best practices and experience. Furthermore VentureLab Twente provides every nessesary support for techno-starters, which should result in this high survival rates.

(Corporate) Entrepreneurship might also be a good form for developing new innovations in the market, and could be a way of thinking to deal with the current problems as the result of the financial crisis. If you are an entrepreneur-with or without an idea-, please check out the website and register there for one of the informational meetings or apply directly to the VentureLab Twente program. With Aard Groen as main driver of this project, and on of the most inspiring people within the School of Management and Governance Faculty this project should become a huge succes, both in terms of practical outcomes as well as contribution to scientific theory.

Reference list:

HOME: VentureLab Twente
NIKOS STAFF: Dr. E. Constantinides Weblog
SLIDES: VentureLab Twente promotional meeting 08-12-2008

Symposium Open Innovation and Creativity in Management and Governance

published on November 22, 2008 by Remo Knops

Because of the 40th anniversary of our faculty School of Management and Governance at the University of Twente, a symposium was organized with two very interesting keynote speakers:

Charles Landry
Professor Henry Chesbrough

Charles Landry – Intercultural cities and Innovation

During this first keynote session, Charles Landry provided the attendees with an exciting presentation with lots of interesting visual material, discussing the visionary “creative city”-approach.

Not only the advantages (clusters of creativity, climate for innovation, multicultural inhabitants, speed and growth) and disadvantages were addressed but also the approach itself and the scientific implications (redesign of the city, bringing more green and a creative atmosphere). Various parts of this great presentation could probably also be applied to the centers of excellence, like the High Tech Campus (Eindhoven), bringing together different complementary businesses supporting creativity and innovation.

“Charles Landry helps cities transform their thinking so that they look at their potential imaginatively and can plan and act with originality. He assesses the interplay and the impacts of deeper global trends, and attempts to ground these in practical initiatives. He inspires, stimulates, challenges and facilitates transformation.”

Henry Chesbrough – Open innovation and open business models

The second keynote session, was even more exciting and energizing to me, since my master program is called “Innovation & Entrepreneurship”. Henry Chesbrough is the leading scientific expert, who has defined the field of (open) innovation. Therefore it’s a unique experience to listen to a first-hand lecture about the fundamental idea’s of your field of study.

The first step in building the theory is a start with the “old” closed-innovation paradigm, illustrated with some detailed examples from Xerox and IBM. In onder to learn, it’s highly relevant to understand mistakes from the past. The second step is a description of the open-innovation paradigm, again illustrated with great examples.This results in understanding the differences and underlying mindset of both the paradigms.

But even more important than the description of the paradigm shift is he detailed background information, and made choices of the examples from the business history. This deepens the understanding of the current business (models) and probably near future choices of direction.

Another extremely important fact in this keynote, that not the better technology but the better business model leads to superior business. This is illustrated with an auto-biographic example where Quantum outer-performed the industry giant IBM by having a better business model. This business model was analogue to Darwin’s evolution theory better adapted to the market circumstances.

“His unique background as both a practitioner and a researcher has made Henry Chesbrough one of the most innovative and respected authorities on how to get ideas to market. Furthermore Henry Chesbrough is a professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas Business School, where he teaches and runs a center on managing innovation and the management of technology and researches in the areas of managing innovation, corporate venture capital, spin-offs, and managing intellectual property.”

Sessions – Parallel session by University Researchers

Between the two keynote sessions a high number of parallel sessions from university researchers were held. I’ve joined the interesting sessions about:

Business Development and Open Innovation / VentureLab Twente
Open Innovation and Financial Customer Value Propositions

Both sessions were very interesting and approach the open innovation theory from a different perspective, which makes it a cross functional discussion topic. The open discussions between lectures, alumni, students and the business people were great to be part of !!

Journal Creativity and Innovation Management Special Issue

“Volume 17 Issue 4 celebrates the 40th anniversary of the home institute of CIM – the School of Management Studies, University of Twente. Under the theme of Open Innovation and Creativity in Management and Governance this issue contains a special, including an article on Open Innovation Practices in Corporate Venturing by Henry Chesbrough, as well as a book review of his latest book Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm. Also, attention is paid to the concept of Creative Cities, coined by Charles Landry, including a book review of The Art of City Making. The issue is now freely available online.”

Finally I want to thank the management of the school of Management and Governance for this successful symposium, with special credits to Petra de Weerd-Nederhoff in the role of main driver of this symposium.

TRAINING: Speed reading, mindmapping & braintraining

published on November 20, 2008 by Remo Knops

The University of Twente organized a two-evening-session “braintraining”, -on the 19th and 20th of November 2008-. I was free to attend the training, and I learned a lot about psychological and neurological processes in our brain.

The trainer is Marc Tigchelaar, who is a dyslexic student himself, has started a consulting firm on the topic op speed learning and his written several books on this topic. In the article below I will summarize some interesting direct applicable facts and techniques that I got from this training,. Of course you need to attend such a training yourself, so I won’t give away to much. 🙂

1. SPEED READING

Speed reading consists of a bundle of techniques to physically train your eyeball-muscles and use the eye tracking movement system of your brain to concentrate and focus on words and phrases. These techniques limit the “eye-stops” during the reading process, and increase your reading speed.

2. SKIMMING AND SCANNING

Skimming and scanning are techniques to quickly get an idea of the topics discussed in the text, or to get the broad picture of a paragraph or chapter (if this technique is applied to a study book). The whole reading process could be represented in three phases (1) preview; (2) read; and (3) review. Of course the skimming and scanning techniques are used for the preview-phase. Perhaps you could add a 4th phase (0) outlines;

Let me discuss this a little more. If I read a scientific article for my studies, I start with the abstract and the conclusions. This takes more time than the skimming or scanning, but it provides me with the outlines, the directions, important conclusions and the whole outlines of the research. It helps during the reading phase to put each piece of the research-puzzle on the right place. However this approach is what I personally like / prefer.

Also very new to me was the fact that reading and understanding a text is a total different cognitive task for the brain than learning and understand a text. This different cognitive tasks require different techniques, and that is something to remember, since we tend to combine both. If so this influences both tasks negatively, and therefore it’s better to sequentially conduct these tasks.

3. MINDMAPPING

Mindmapping is a technique developped by Tony Buzan, and could be defined as a schematic way of writing down your information (inline with the functioning of your brain). Some simple tips are: use images and words (humans are good in visualizing and memorinzing images), use words of essence, and use a structure. Our brain “likes” a certain structure.

Since I have a Lenovo X60 tablet, I already discovered the power of writing down your idea’s to provide an overview of the topic you are working on. Furthermore it’s a very powerful tool for structuring the idea’s into a good format for the article or essay your are writing. Mindjet Mindmanager is a great tool to use to create mindmaps.

4. BRAIN TRAINING

The final part of the training consisted of several braintrainig techniques, but the basic principals consist of: (1) making use of the words of essence; (2) translate those words into images; (3) put thos images into a structure.

A very cool technique I was really amazed about is the so called Loci technique. We had to draw a rout or room which we know very well. The room or route should consist of 20 points. At random 20 words are read and should be connected with the sequential point of the “route” in a visual image. Crazy assosiations are memorized better. After a minute of fifteen we had to write down the words in the sequential order. The amazing result is that with this technique it’s easy to memorize the 20 words and put them into your longterm memory.

Finally the training was ended with a video with one of the speed reading world champions. The close up of eyes and techniques this men uses are really amazing to see. With this practical example I want to thank Marc Tigchelaar for the einteresting training, and you can combine or use the techniques in the way they help you in your study- or businesslife.

Reference list: