Christmas is near and ØresundEntrepreneurshipAcademy and I would like to wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a very happy New Year. For us, 2008 has been a very exciting year with an immense amount of innovative projects and initiatives for developing entrepreneurship. We expect 2009 to bring even more entrepreneurial activities as a result of the positive support from our funding partners.
Entrepreneurship is not only about making use of a business idea to earn money. In the spirit of Christmas and the development in society in general, entrepreneurship allows you to make changes on a societal level. The term used to describe this is social entrepreneurship. A social entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change. ØresundEntrepreneurshipAcademy will prepare for the year 2009 with a special focus on social entrepreneurship in this newsletter.
Morning Entrepreneurial Education Encounters
The first morning meeting was on the 24th of November, and the speaker for the day was Christoph Hienerth. He spoke about new sources of innovation and about his experience in the field of Entrepreneurship. The meeting was successful and received appraisal from the participating MinervaBridge members . The second meeting which was held in the offices of Øresund Entrepreneurship Acacdemy on the 9th of December was an event in itself as 25 people showed up for the presentation byJesper Falkheimer, from the Department of Communication Studies at the Lund University, he spoke about strategic communication for entrepreneurs.
The dates for upcoming meetings are:
22nd of January, Kilen, Kilevej 14A, 1.floor, DK-2000 Frederiksberg Kai Hockerts, CBS - Department of Intercultural Communication and Management will introduce the theme, Social Entrepreneurship and teaching cases.
11th of Febuary, Öresundshuset, Ö Vallgatan 14, 221 00 Lund Frederik Nilsson, LundUniversity will talk about logistics and innovation.
11th of March, Kilen, Kilevej 14A, 1.floor, DK-2000 Frederiksberg Lise Bisballe, RUC, Center for Socialt entrepreneurship presents the theme, Social Entrepreneurship
Read more about the program for the 22nd of January here. For participation at these meetings, please send your registration to Lene Vestergaard at lene.vestergaard@oeacademy.org.
Contest – Who is a Social Entrepreneur?
JoinØresundEntrepreneurshipAcademy's competition and win a delivery of vegetables from Mossagården. The competition was kicked off the 16th of December. You have to identify a social entrepreneur amongst more alternatives. Students from the 12 universities in the Øresund Region are welcome to participate. The competition is part of a campaign to spread knowledge about social entrepreneurship among students and teachers at the 12 universities in the Øresund Region.
The competition is presented as case stories in which three young students are facing a business possibility and have to choose how they want to approach it. One of the alternatives is a social entrepreneurship project, and the question is to be able to identify this alternative among two others.
The competition will be running until the 30th of April 2009 and the winners will be announced during week 15 on www.oeacademy.org. You can participate in the competition with our competition-postcards or on our website.
Turning a Dream Into Reality
The common assumption that Danes make about the reasons why foreigners come to Denmark, do not apply to Javier Leocadio Colon as he did not leave the U.S.A for a woman, but rather for another passion: education.Javier comes from an environment, where hard work was an essential ingredient to success. His mother and three brothers have always encouraged him to strive for the best and told him that to become successful you needed education. This was the only way to escape poverty. Javier eventually went on to graduate from The Copenhagen Business School in December 2007 with a Masters degree in Intercultural Management. After graduating, he faced a difficult point in his life. Lost and confused, Javier did not know exactly what to do next. The confusion of not knowing where to start led him to contact an old acquaintance who was volunteering with an organization by the name of KIVA who was stationed in Peru. After several discussions with his friend and inspiration from the work of Dr. Muhammad Yunus (Nobel Peace Prize Winner 2006), Javier decided to dedicate himself to helping people. This led him to create Wheels of Action (WOA).
Javier Leocadio Colon
The idea behind WOA is to inspire and motivate people to take action against poverty. “We are currently living in the bike capital of the world, so what better way to get people involved in the fight against global poverty, than by having people get on their bikes and ride for a purpose?” Javier aims to motivate people through bicycle events and local concerts to attract as much attention as possible to bring to light the work of many smaller NGO's and their quest to eradicate poverty.
Through an enormous intercontinental bicycle race from Denmark to Tanzania that will take place in November 2009, the WOA team hopes to motivate more effectively future actions in its efforts towards alleviating poverty. “I am known for doing extreme things, like walking a thousand kilometers across Spain in the legendary pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela or biking 1600 km along the coast of Iceland”, says Javier and he believes that with his determination and the help from his fellow volunteers, they can motivate change through their actions.
The bicycle race across the European and African continents is more than just a publicity stunt, it is an attempt to show the Danes and the world that poverty is not on another planet, it is so close that one can literally ride to it on your bike. The race starts in Copenhagen and continues Southward through Amsterdam, Paris, Madrid and into Morocco then on through Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, across the Central African Republic States, before going through the Sudan, Uganda, Kenya and finally finishing in Tanzania. The journey is expected to last 3 months.
WOA uses a unique collection of student volunteers and professionals that come together to combine their energy and expertise to raise funds and awareness for small NGOs committed to eradicating poverty. When asked why the focus was on Tanzania and not any other African country, Javier humorously explains that all signs seemed to point towards Tanzania.
Like Dr. Muhammad Yunus, Javier believes in starting something that can not only alleviate poverty but also create something sustainable within a community which increases the chances of developing economic stability over time. “Instead of just giving something away, I want to supply something that is sustainable in the long run”. Making cooperation agreements with collaborators such as ‘Cykler til Senegal’ and ‘The Nadia Plesner Foundation’ has also put WOA on the map of emerging youth-led non-profit organizations. The team of people working for Wheels of Action consists of ten volunteers that manage to balance their time with their busy schedules to assist WOA’s work with its anti-poverty projects.
When asked about what advice he could give to other students who wish to get themselves involved in social entrepreneurship, he said, “You have to truly believe that you can make a difference. You must stay focused and not be too proud. Because a good idea can only become great with the help of others. So stay focused, believe in yourself and don’t be afraid to listen to others.”
For more information about Wheels Of Action, please take a look at their homepage or join their Facebook Group: Wheels Of Action.
New Innovative Teaching Methods There are many ways in which students can be inspired to learn and percieve. It is the wish of many teachers and professors to inspire students by means of teaching which is a challenge in itself. DR. Charles M. Vance has managed to do just that. Charles Vance is a management professor with an expertise in human resource management, training and development. He teaches the course Human Resource Management at LayolaMarymountUniversity.
It is increasingly recognized today that human resources represent an organization's most valuable assets contributing to productivity. Various studies on organizational effectiveness have pointed out the human factor as being the #1 factor, far above all other factors that determines success in achieving organizational objectives. People can make it happen! The effective management of human resources at all levels in all kinds of organizations large, small, public, or private merits careful study and consideration.
The purpose of this course is to provide students with a strong foundation in the important methods, strategies, issues, and legal information related to the HRM function within organizations. A major priority of this class is to help students gain valuable insights related to HRM from real-world experiences in our surrounding community of Southern California, which can also provide potential benefits to students in developing their future career. To enhance the relevance of learning as well as to contribute to the career development opportunities, each group engages in five field learning activities performed with one organization on campus and at least two different organizations off campus (profit or non-profit), all of the student’s own choice. It is desirable that the organizations chosen by the students are similar to those where they would like to have an internship or gain employment in the future. In fact, one of the assignments even serves as a consulting project experience that can be included in the student’s resume. The five assignments are related to the important HR topics: Job Design, Staffing, Employee Satisfaction, Career Planning, and Performance.
Hong Kong winners The four winners of this year's napkin competition were celebrated at the award ceremony arranged by ØresundEntrepreneurshipAcademy on 19th of November 2008. The winners were students from LundUniversity, CopenhagenBusinessSchool and the IT University in Copenhagen. One thing they had in common were the exciting and creative business ideas.
The four winners were found among the 20 nominees and they all won a ticket to Hong Kong Science and TechnologyParks. The price was presented to the winners by Claus V. Hemmingsen, Denmark-Hong Kong Trade Association. The winning ideas were a new service for mobile telephone subscription, sponsored business cards for students, interactive billboards, and a new reality game.
”The students have been very creative and innovative. The ideas all have great business potential” says Christian Vintergaard, Managing Director for ØresundEntrepreneurshipAcademy. ”The visit to Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks will hopefully help our winners to develop their ideas further, so that we in the future can use their products and services.”
”I am proud and happy for being nominated. It was a creative and fun competition and a challenge to have to explain your idea in only a few lines”, says Olof Svensson, one of the 20 nominees.
Front row: Last year's winner Hakeem Adebola Lawal and Michael Friis
Back row: Project manager Pål Fernvell, Kathrine Naustdahl, Managing Director Christian Vintergaard, Louise Rosdahl, Richard Laurits, Project Manager Kåre Moberg and Claus V. Hemmingsen
The winners Jacob Lönroth, Louice Rosdahl, Katrine Naustdal and Michael Friis will be going to Hong Kong in February together with a representative from the student incubator VentureLab from LundUniversity. They were the ones who inspired the most students to participate in the competition. As last year, the young entrepreneurs will be introduced to the entrepreneurial and innovative environment in Hong Kong. They will also get the opportunity to build a network and establish contacts that can be useful in the future.
To read more about their business ideas, log on to our website.
Report from Spain Lise Callesen, a student at RoskildeUniversity and Ambjörn Håkansson, a student at LundUniversity, won a trip to Spain, San Sebastian in October 2008, to visit an extraordinary entrepreneurship education at Universidad de Deusto. The students have participated in a competition designed as a job advertisement arranged by ØresundEntrepreneurshipAcademy. At the university in Spain the students participated in the program for a week and followed the Spanish students when they start up the fall activities. They experienced inspiring meetings with the Spanish students, who shared their experiences from internships and the six months Erasmus exchange programs, that are all integrated elements of the course at Universidad de Deusto.
On their arrival in Spain, both Lisa and Ambjörn were received by the students with great enthusiasm and hospitality. “Students from the entrepreneurship program were good hosts to both of us, which I think was a great idea, as it gave us an opportunity to make contact to the students from the beginning. They were taking us out every day and made a great effort in enabling us to have a good time” said Lisa. On their first day in the University, they were shown around campus and then joined a seminar of the Innovandis program, where we were asked to make an evaluation of the programme to compare the differences or similarities between Nordic and Spanish perspectives which was helpful for them to understand the Spanish method of learning.
All in all, Lisa and Ambjörn gained entrepreneurial knowledge which will be helpful for them in the future and they learned what it means to work in a different culture. They have both appreciated the opportunity, Lisa: “It was an inspiring trip in many ways, and an opportunity to meet a lot of new people.”
Click here to read Lisa’s and Ambjörn’s reports in detail.
Study trip and Master Class in London
By Lise Bisballe The trip to London was a combined study trip and Master Class in social entrepreneurship and was as such a part of two projects focusing on social entrepreneurship that currently are carried out by Roskilde University in a partnership with Lund University and Malmö Högskola within the framework of Øresund Entrepreneurship Academy.
As the participants formed an interdisciplinary group of teachers and researchers representing urban studies, social science, arts, communication and social entrepreneurship the program for the study trip aimed at exemplifying how the field of social entrepreneurship shows itself in UK right now with respect to the different backgrounds and interests of the participants. We visited innovative training environmentsin order to grasptheir training methods and to explore how a launch pad for social entrepreneurs works. To give a flavour of social entrepreneurship locally and of the different Social Enterprise models we visited different sites in East London from urban regeneration in Lewisham where strategic synthesis between arts, culture, economy, urban vitality, landscape and urban design has resulted various programs and mechanisms for delivery and to platforms for artists working closely with local schools in Bow area as well as a mission based social enterprise in Silvertown focusing on work integration of homeless people.
The objective of the Master Class, which was the third in a row of five, was to explore various teaching methods applicable to teaching in social entrepreneurship and social enterprise. We had invited Gladius Kulothungan, who has pioneered Europe’s first Bachelor in Social Enterprise at University of East London (UEL), to tell about the special methods he is using at the BA Social Enterprise at UEL. Also Chris Durkin from NorthamptonUniversity and Doug Foster from SurreyUniversity were invited. They are both experienced in integrating social entrepreneurship in their courses. Finally we met present and former students from the BA Social Enterprise who were asked to present their experiences from the course and their focus was the subjects that were important for their development as social entrepreneur as well as their recommendations for the academia on how teaching in social entrepreneurship should be delivered.
Entrepreneurial Opportunities By Stefan K. Madsen
Two students, Mikkel Krogsgaard and Stefan K. Madsen (both cand.merc in Finance and Strategic Management at CBS), handed in an exam paper about understanding and explaining the problem of growth and generational transition in Danish SMEs by applying concepts from the Austrian School of Economics while framing the issue using financial Real Option Theory. They both realized that the findings of the paper could be merited an entrepreneurial endower to get it published and get even more value than just the high grade out of the work. However, before publishing in a journal the paper needed more academic feedback. But already the first conference applied to, accepted the paper and the students got a trip to the annual Austrian Student Scholars Conference (ASSC), held at the Grove City College, Pennsylvania, USA.
The trip could not have been possible without the help of the ASSC and ØresundEntrepreneurshipAcademy. “We received very constructive feedback. We had some concerns with regards to potential flaws in our methodological approach, but were reassured in many ways. Also, we acquired input that will make the paper even more relevant and applicable in different settings. We now believe to have a better chance than ever to have this paper published. We are extremely grateful that ØresundEntrepreneurshipAcademy believes in people like us who are willing to step up and make things like this become a reality. To us it makes a world of difference!” Mikkel Krogsgaard states. The next step for the two vocational academics is to apply for publication in a journal.
Are you interested in an International Entrepreneurial career? Is the Master program in Entrepreneurship at LundUniversity something for you? Under a year, you shall be able to adapt the practical theoretical capabilities which will give you the opportunity to start up your own business but also allow you to work with innovative projects under existing companies.
There are no requirements for having expert knowledge in business economics. Send applications before the 15th of January 2009.
New publications from the Center for Social Entrepreneurship
Social Entrepreneurship – the current description - CSE Annual Report 2008.
The annual report from Center for Social Entrepreneurship disseminates the latest knowledge in the field to a wide audience, and presents a combination of theoretical articles, case studies, interviews and portraits that touch upon various aspects of social entrepreneurship. The themes that are addressed in the annual report includes social economy and social enterprises, community development and participation, empowerment and inclusion, governance and challenges in the voluntary sector and corporate social responsibility. There is also a Nordic and European perspective on social entrepreneurship.
The annual report is edited by LindaLundFarmCenter and Professor Lars Andersen Hulgård and published by the CSE Publications and can be downloaded here.
Education for Social Entrepreneurship Master thesis.By Lise Bisballe, Esben Hulgård og Lars René Petersen,CSE Publications 03 – 08.
In recent years, there has emerged different bachelor and master's degrees in social entrepreneurship, both in and outside Denmark's borders. How can one understand how social entrepreneurship from being a relatively new and unknown phenomenon becomes widely accepted and used as a framework for understanding new trends and approaches to social work? And what happens with the innovative and entrepreneurial dimensions of social entrepreneurship, when these are the subject of formal education?
From the 17th to the 22nd of November, the Danish Ministry of Economic and Business Affairs hosted the Global Entrepreneurship Week in Denmark. During the week a great number of events took place in collaboration with partners from both the private and public sector – operating on national, regional and local levels.
According to the Minister Economic and Business Affairs, Lene Espersen, it was a good initiative to take as “It is the government's goal to have Denmark among the communities in the world where most growth start-up companies exist in 2015. If we are to achieve this goal, it is important to continually improve and inspire budding entrepreneurs already in the public school system and all the way up the education system. The many activities in connection with "Start business - start growth" is an important step in the right direction.” The minister added, “I am really pleased that we have managed to assemble so many of the players in the entrepreneurial field to a joint effort in week 47. They have helped to ensure a broad palette of activities to offer to everyone - from directors with specific growth ambitions for inventors in schools and students with entrepreneurial dreams.”
The events which Øresund Entrepreneurship Academy organized in collaboration with Idea House were a great success and many students showed up to learn more about entrepreneurship and the opportunities to travel abroad.
Top Meeting Announcement
In connection with Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW), a meeting was announced to manage the role of organizations working with Entrepreneurship in order to make an agenda for how they can contribute to the GEW.
The organizations goal is to contribute to greater value creation. Several entrepreneurs promote innovation culture in their companies. It opens up to the fact that employees can come in with their ideas. Entrepreneurs also reinforce the organization’s innovativeness and qualify their interests. As the more growth entrepreneurs provide, the more new jobs and more businesses will flourish and thus more members for organizations. The way to make that happen is by developing and implementing the following actions:
1. Preparing entrepreneurial approach for growth The organizations wish to affect entrepreneurs position to create growth and help entrepreneurs to professionalize themselves and generate growth. The organizations will help establish professional boards, such as using concrete board exchanges just like Morgendagens Heltinder.
2. Finding and promoting role models The organizations must map out what is already under way among entrepreneurs, businesses and educational institutions, and to present role models to inspire others. It also important to promote the concept of being creative and that it should not be a bad thing for talented employees to have good ideas.
Mohammad Yunus - The man behind microcredit
On the 4th of December, the Nobel Laureate Dr. Mohammad Yunus, who is considered one of the biggest beacons of our time visited CopenhagenBusinessSchool. He is the man behind microcredit and through Grameen Bank he has shown how social and economic developments go hand in hand. Muhammad Yunus breaks away from the conventional corporate social responsibility, and the social business is put up for discussion in a global and a Danish perspective.
How do we make the best possible use of our experiences on the global market? And how can social companies contribute to the development of the welfare society? These issues were on the agenda when the Nobel Laureate started the panel debate.
Mohammad Yunus giving his speech at Copenhagen Business School
Øresund Entrepreneruship Acacemy is hiring
Do you want to be a part of developing entrepreneurship at the 12 universities in the Øresund Region? ØresundEntrepreneurshipAcademy is now posting 3 jobs. Check our website for more information.
