On March 8 the VentureLab staff combined their bi-annual strategy meeting with a celebration of receiving 1.1 million euro funding from the “regio twente”.

“To stimulate and reward entrepreneurship, Saxion (University of Applied Sciences) and Eric Wentink (EW Facility Services) are looking for Saxion’s entrepreneur of the year!”

Nominies are:

• Kirsten van der Vaart, Fresh ’n Food
• Tjeert Fontein & Niels Korterik, Fuji Consultancy
• Martin Postel, Avido Skincare
• Sylt Steen, Gerard van Bemmel and Pieter Coerman, Swift Aerials
• Rob ten Hove, Nationaal Forensisch Adviesbureau
• Myrette van Houten, Praktijk voor podotherapie

Prize money is € 6.000, € 2.500 or € 1.500! More info and application to join the festivities, check the entrepreneurs-award site (in Dutch).

On March 18 and 19 VentureLab Twente presents an Open Training to offer all potential participants a taste of what participating in the VentureLab programme would be like.

On March 18, in the evening, you are invited to the monthly network dinner and VentureClass. Both events are free of charge. You can apply here (Open Training) and here (VentureClass, with more info).

One of the highlights in the Open Training is a training on ‘Understanding Business Strategy’ by Michael Hitt. Michael A. Hitt is a Distinguished Professor and holds the Joe B. Foster Chair in Business Leadership at Texas A&M University. He has more than 260 publications including 26 co-authored or co-edited books. He has been recognized as one of the ten most cited scholars in management over a 25-year period in an article published in the 2008 volume of the Journal of Management. Read the rest of this entry →

On March 5, the entrepreneurs in Blue4Green will share with the participants in VentureLab how they traveled their route to success. A lot of entrepreneurs start searching for a business opportunity or promising market as a foundation for their business. However, this was not how Daan Sistermans and Erik Staijen started Blue4Green. In their lecture they will speak about the “personal center” as starting point for entrepreneurship: What do I want to do with my life? Which role suits me best? What gives me the most energy? On the surface these questions look simple, but the answers had big entrepreneurial implications to them and the way they manage the growth of Blue4Green.

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This weekend we’ll implement some improvements on the VentureLab Twente site. In particular we are going to provide the possibility to create and maintain user-accounts. These accounts are especially meant for the VLT-participants (entrepreneurs), to make their own subpage on the website and show themselves to a broad audience! And a lot of other possibilities will come with these accounts… stay tuned!

Also, when the site temporarily doesn’t work this weekend, please pick one of the following messages for yourself: creative maintenance messages.