SSES – Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship

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KTH has a lot to offer to students who are interested in starting up a new business.  One example is the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship, SSES, with the reputation of being one of the world’s leading academic facilities in the area of innovation and entrepreneurship. It is a collaboration between KI, KTH, SSE, Stockholm University and Konstfack giving the participants high diversity regarding interests and education.

“Our education and training focuses on preparing you for real life.” – SSES

They have lots of workshops, seminars and other events. Unfortunately many of the workshops collide with the entrepreneurship classes on Fridays but  this morning I attended an event hosted by Henrik Toft, a senior IBM IT Architect.

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He talked about Watson, a super cool tool to process big data and it felt like it is on the verge of AI! I found it very inspiring even though my future start up probably won’t be based on this complex IT.  Here are two movies about IBM’s super computer:

Long film about Watson

Short clip about Watson

And if you want to try it, there is a 30 day free trial 😀

Bluemix

And if you are interested to know more about SSTS and other exiting events that they are hosting:

http://www.sses.se/

Have a nice day!

Erica

 

What the **** is entrepreneurship?!

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Why I picked this course? There is a simple answer to that question being that one day I might be an entrepreneur myself and I really want to be a good one. Specially I want answer for that what I should do when I have good business idea and I want to create profitable company so the biggest cap or black hole in my knowledge is what comes between great idea and running a quite stable and profitable company. The question is really complicated and there is no right answer for it but I think there is good and bad answers. The real job for me is to evaluate the good ones from the bad ones and then create my own vision how to survive the crucial beginning of my company.

I am not quite sure if these blog posts or tweets help me become the master of entrepreneurship but that we will find out. I have studied just a few business courses but rather studied and spoke with others students I get the feeling that entrepreneurship is more like art or black magic than anything else and it is also weird that almost all business students don’t want to create their own company. The more you study business the less you want to create your own business. Maybe one reason for that is the really hard beginning, high risks to fail and usually big investments so in many cases you will sell your whole life for your own business and if you fail hard you will lose everything. But there is also chance for success so if you rock and you rock hard I think that it will be really nice especially if your company or invention can help people around the planet and make this a better place for us.

We will see if this course can give us right keys and tools for creating profitable business which I really hope. So it is now the teacher’s turn to convince us. But still I think the most important parts for success are:

  • good idea,
  • confidence in your own business,
  • vision and
  • great team!

Lastly there is a picture bellow which tells what people think about entrepreneurs and I think the last picture tells the true story what being entrepreneur really will be. I really hope that society or friends are right at least this time!

yritysläppä

Respect

Veikko

 

Vapiano

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Last evening, I join some friends to go for dinner at Vapiano  restaurant. It sounded great but I didn’t know this restaurant except that you can eat Pizza – an italian restaurant. You’ll may laugh at me to have never been be there but I would like to share my experience with you.

When I arrived there, I realized that it was so much more than a simple restaurant.

You come in an amazing place where you can be served at the individual station at the middle of Vapiano, people are sitting around long oak tables which are open to communication, there are long bar to have a break after the dinner, ….

“Chi va piano va sano e va lontano – world wide.” : According to an italian proverb “If you have an easy-going and relaxed approach to life, you’ll live more healthily and longer”

So, when you arrive, the waiter/waitress give you your personal smart-card. This card will register all the dishes you will take during your dinner. At the end of the night, you just have to give this card and pay with you credit card. Then, if you have to wait for a table because of there is too many people in the restaurant, they give you a casing which will ring when a table will be available. And what is amazing, it is that you don’t have to wait at the entrance, but you can go in and have a drink at the bar with your friend.  Moreover, it is a self service, so with your card, you can go to the differents individual station :

  • Pizza
  • Pasta
  • Antipasta
  • Specials
  • Bar
  • Deserts

When your order is made, you go back to discuss with your friends at the table and wait the ringing of the casing when your dish is ready to savor.

Thus, you can’t expect to wait at you table that the waitress/waiter serve you is this type of restaurant. It looks like a self service canteen and we can forget the traditional restaurant. But I think it is a wonderful system, because the guests can see all the ingredients, how its cook and if its seem to be fresh. Everyone can have his meal prepared to his own personal preference.

To conclude, the inventor of this chaine cumble the clients’ needs and developped his idea all over the world. People trust food, are not annoyed by the receipt and just enjoy their meal in Vapiano.

I liked it !

http://de.vapiano.com/en/magazine/sorting/date/

 

Genies, a myth. No more!

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So what’s a Genie?  You rub the lamp, make a wish and he gets it done? Well, except for the lamps being mobile phones in this case and pinging him on “Whatsapp” about what you want can make Genies possible. Can’t it?

I extrapolated this idea from a small company called Whatsapp Genie, an auto responder app back in India working on getting things done for the consumers without having to move/surf around. It uses Whatsapp as platform.

  1. Updates on train routes/delays/schedule ( Indian Railway network is kinda the largest in the world. Well, also dirty and screwed up in a way 😛 )
  2. Daily Jokes, quotes and score updates.
  3. Desserts, popcorns for movie nights at home.
  4. Grocery shopping
  5. They are diversifying themselves everyday. There must be more now.

The name  Whatsapp Genie actually got me quite excited. I am imagining a service where one has to just pick the category of service needed and Whatsapp this great Genie about what needs to be done.

  1. Hey Genie, book movie tickets for me?
  2. Hey Genie, get me pizzas from “$*%*&*%” ?
  3. ?  ( ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING)

My opinion: The taxi app “UBER” attracted a lot of users because one could book a taxi with just two clicks. I think that if an idea like this when tracked in the right way, it could become the one of the best startups of the decade.

Please feel free to comment below and let me know your views and ideas on Whatsapp Genie  🙂

 

Wantentrepreneur or entrepreneur?

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Hello everyone,

So, it ‘s Sunday evening and today it’s almost two weeks ago since I entered that classroom for our first entrepreneur class. Since then I’ve had the opportunity to meet and listen to cool entrepreneurs, talk to inspiring people at the SUP46 event and I’ve also been hanging around in cyberspace to find some cool startups and stories and so I did.

I found this interview with Evan Asano, Founder and CEO of Mediakix and he is giving some advices on how you go from being a “wantentrepreneur ” to an entrepreneur. Follow the link below and you will have some inspiring thoughts.

http://www.inc.com/quora/9-reasons-why-you-need-to-stop-dreaming-and-start-building.html

/ Moa

Battlehack

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So I visited this Battlehack event after receiving the tip at the lecture last Friday. I had a strong impression seeing all these hackers wanting to create something new and innovating. There were also some interesting presentations on IT innovation from people who encouraged others to make your idea come to reality. I was especially impressed by this small (and new) company called Estimote. They create beacons that you can attach to your daily object to make them a part of your digitalized world.

Before they started to hack, it was a great event to meet interesting and inspiring (present and future) entrepreneurs!
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//Nilay

Imitation is Innovation

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A recent article in Times of India claims that imitation is innovation and refers to a quote by artist Pablo Picasso.  Further the article states that many successful Indian start-ups are based on similar ideas from the US or Europe which have then been customised to fit the Indian market.

 

”Good artists copy, great artists steal, said Pablo Picasso, one of the 20th century’s most influential artists, implying that a good artist merely reproduces a subject while a great one takes possession of it and turns it into something new. It’s a maxim that many Indian startups, who have adapted ideas for services from the US and other countries, seem to live by.”

 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Imitation-is-innovation/articleshow/48907419.cms

 

#KTH #ME2603 #Entrepreneurship

Steam

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In the  lecture today, Serdar spoke about how Spotify fought piracy and peer-to-peer downloads. I came to think about a different company called Valve and their service Steam. Steam uses the same ideas as Spotify but for PC games. They saw that piracy was a problem and found a solution by first creating an easier platform for finding games and then creating an easier payment method with Steam wallet.

Gabe Newell, the co-founder of Valve explains his views about piracy by saying

“In general, we think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. For example, if a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.”

This is very interesting because it contradicts what the developers of games are doing against piracy.

Source:

Interview: http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/interviews/0012301-interview-gabe-newell.html

Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/

 

How big is your niche?

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Hey everyone,

I was thinking about a good idea for my elevator pitch when I encountered this problem. How can you now how big your niche is and if the niche is big enough to support your idea and make it succesful? Because you have to find a problem in your daily life which you can solve with your solution. But what if you are an exception or that it is just a problem in your own country? I think it’s sometimes hard to know if you will have enough customers, because in the case that there are a few people with the same problem in every country, you have enough customers, but how will you get to all those different people around the world?

I’m curious what you think about this and if you are also struggeling with it. I hope to hear your opinions.

Regards,

Tim Buzink

Female Entrepreneurs

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Hey Guys!

Really liked the blogpost by Celine Tevy Ly ” WHAT ABOUT FEMALE ENTREPRENEURS ?” which inspired be to look around and see what kind of big and famous tech-female entrepreneurs we have. Found this video on Ted talks about Dame Stephanie Shirley. I have never heard of her before but in the 1960s, she founded a pioneering all-woman software company in the UK, which was recently valued at $3 billion, making 70 people on her team millionaires. In the video she explains why she went by “Steve,” how she upended the expectations of the time, and shares some sure-fire ways to identify ambitious women.

HTTPS://WWW.TED.COM/TALKS/DAME_STEPHANIE_SHIRLEY_WHY_DO_AMBITIOUS_WOMEN_HAVE_FLAT_HEADS/TRANSCRIPT?LANGUAGE=EN