I began my morning with a slow run, before we started our inspiration tour. We got more company, as some austrian entrepreneurs joined. Cornelia — who does a social enterprise, Gerwin — who works on a hardware startup, and Thomas — who connects business people with local virtual assistants. And Kat joined also, who works as TEDx organiser, ambassador.

First we wet to see SAP Labs. It was fascinating to see how much they embrace the design thinking methodology. During our visit I noticed an XY chart on the wall, dealing with learning. I asked Anita, our host, who did that, and she was very kind to connect me to the right person. Next week I’ll come back here to have a meeting about learning experience. Perfect opportunity to explore the B2B side of my idea.

Think big… really big

Next, we went to Vodafone’s Co-Creation Lab. Here they work together with clients and partners to create new, innovative concepts, using lean and design thinking methodology. And they dare to think big. For example a service that helps people in the developing world to do better agriculture, with a “make farming cool” mentality. Given that we’re talking about a billion people, even a small success will have big positive effect. Our guide, Shannon was very helpful. We went into a little discussion about the potential in mobile learning. Next week I’ll come back for a longer one.

Oily startups

For the next event, we headed back to Stanford, where Prof Burton Lee organized a lecture about European Entrepreneurship. Today, one VC from Norway and one from Scotland talked about their oil focused countries, from startup point of view.

In the intro, the professor mentioned the Charlie Hebdo tragedy. He argued, that as an entrepreneur, you need free speech to tell your story, your disruptive idea. And attacks like the one against Charlie go against the entrepreneurial spirit. Also such violence may push Europe to the wrong direction — causing governments to focus on national stuff instead of building a better ecosystem.

Arne, the VC from Norway mentioned, that although his country is uber-rich, the lack of entrepreneurial culture and ambition slows the growth of their startup ecosystem. Although, more and more Norwegian startups are acquired, and the (experienced, connected) people leaving these companies come back to build new ones. Also they have an innovation house here in SV that helps their companies to do a soft landing in the US.

Jamie flew in from Scotland to deliver his presentation. A presentation that was not only informative, but super funny — like a startup standup. ☺ Appearently they had a law, that ensured that you get back 101% of your money if your startup failed. Nowadays it’s only 86%. So, if you want to build your startup in a gorgeous environment, you might want to consider Edinburgh. Especially in you are into B2B.

Unfortunately we had to leave a bit early. But I’ll come back here, as I want to talk to Prof Lee. It would be interesting to see if there are any students who would want to work together with startups from the CEE region that are just preparing their US entry. We’ll see…

#conquestofparadise