INESC TEC promotes workshops for entrepreneurs
In February 2013, INESC TEC’s Innovation and Technology Transfer Unit (UITT) organised the "Design Thinking" training session to encourage the creativity of the participants in problem solving. In March, UITT also initiated a cycle of workshops, which will last until April, dedicated to the problems of growth and development of university spin-offs.
09th April 2013
The first "Design Thinking" workshop was organised as part of the iDO initiative, which also participates in the European Information Centre Jacques Delors. Conducted by Novabase (IT company), the aim of the session was to help participants look around and identify problems/opportunities to discover solutions and materialise them by creating new products, services or business models.
The experience,
based on the Design Thinking methodology (developed by Stanford University and
applied in Portugal by Novabase), was well received by 30 participants and
provided, according Andreia Passos, a collaborator at UITT, "an informal
working environment, essential to break down barriers and encourage creativity,
several proposals to solve a problem/challenge launched right at the beginning."
The Spin-Up workshop cycle, which began on 8March, aims to provide the participants with key business skills, essential to boost growth and the establishment of university spin-offs. "Innovation, Marketing and Sales", "Strategy" and "Financial Planning" were the titles of the first workshops; two more are scheduled for April on "Internationalisation" and "Human Resources Management and Leadership".
This series of workshops is promoted as part of the Spin-Up European project, funded by the European Commission under the Lifelong Learning Programme. This is a European partnership involving INESC Porto (Portugal), Advancis (Portugal), Leaders2Be (Netherlands), the Technical University of Delft (The Netherlands) and the Lappeenranta University of Technology (Finland).
Any of these training activities promoted by the UITT is mainly for entrepreneurship project participants in which the Unit is involved (CEICI by UPTEC PINC and the TEC-EMPREENDE), but the invitation is also extended to start-ups and other entities without connection the university. According to Andreia Passos, the presence of "a heterogeneous group of participants can enrich and encourage debate".