Ideation and Venture Creation Masterclass

The University of Vaasa has organised a Summer School on Entrepreneurship and Venturing in cooperation with Wärtsilä Sustainable Technology Hub.

This Summer School included three courses, from which one is a Masterclass organised in collaboration with OpenInnoTrain. To know more about the other two courses, check the official event page from the University of Vaasa. 

The course Ideation and Venture Creation (3 ECTS, from 14 – 18 August 2023) was organised by the University of Vaasa in collaboration with the OpenInnoTrain project and Wärtsilä’s Sustainable Technology Hub, in which’s facilities the course was arranged.

The program included inspirational talks and testimonials by Niall Shakeshaft, Vice President and Head of Design at VTT, Technical Research Centre of Finland; Mikael Leppä, Head of Design from the Norwegian state energy company Equinor; University Lecturer Minna-Maarit Jaskari from the School of Marketing and Communication at the University of Vaasa; and Raphael Stanzani, Entrepreneurship Programs Manager at UPTEC in Porto.

The course was organized by Mona Enell-Nilsson, OpenInnoTrain WP4 CleanTech leader, and Philipp Holtkamp from UVA; and it involved several OpenInnoTrain secondees: from speakers Minna-Maarit Jaskari and Raphael Stanzani to participants Bianca Banica and Mariana Figueira Alves.

The event also included members of Wärtsilä Kenneth Widell (welcome & company presentation) and Kasper Kalpamaa (company tour & jury); coaches Antti Sinisalo (University of Vaasa) and Jari Ratilainen (MUOVA/West Coast Startup); jury members such as Marko Koski (EnergySpin); and the organizing team was completed by Riccardo Notarangelo (UVA), Shahid Hafeez (UVA) and Ville Lempola (UVA).  

Throughout the week, the participants worked in teams and experienced an innovation process guided and supported by the course coaches and based on the Jump Starter Ideation Toolkit, developed by Wärtsilä. On the final course day, the teams pitched the outcomes to a jury consisting of industrial and academic representatives. As social activities, the participants enjoyed a visit and dinner at Bock’s Corner Brewery in Vaasa and, in sunny summer weather, an archipelago tour in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Kvarken Archipelago.

OpenInnoTrain secondee Bianca Banica (from INESC TEC, Portugal) commented that the event was a “very hands-on Summer School, we got to go through the full process of Ideation, from day 1: start from a problem, really dive into understanding it, then find a solution for it, pitch the solution and see what others think about it. Working in groups was really fun and having a physical kit motivated us to explore more our ideas. Giving feedback between the groups made it feel even more collaborative. I enjoyed the open dialogues a lot and the spontaneous debates that started from people asking about their doubts. I also really liked that the speakers shared their experience with Product Design, Business Design, User Research and Entrepreneurial Journey and then they would become mentors and give feedback on our group work. We improved our solution every day based on that. I felt a genuine interest from the organisers and guests towards really listening and supporting learning”.

“I had a great experience at the event. I attended the Ideation and Venture creation course where my team and I developed a business idea. The coaches guided us and helped to mature our business idea, and at the end of the course we gave a presentation to a jury that provided insightful comments. It was my first time doing a pitch, so I enjoyed the experience. Also, the social activities were important to unite us as a group. I believe I learned a lot about developing business ideas and made important connections during the course”, added secondee Mariana Figueira Alves (from UPC, Spain).

Moreover, OpenInnoTrain secondee Raphael Stanzani (from UPTEC, Portugal) shared that “the mentorship was interesting because the teams started brainstorming since the first day and as they were constituted of people from different background, cultures and nationalities, it was an intense flow of insights and inspirations. The support from the jump starter kit (their idea generation tool) was really impactful on the students’ progress as it provided tools to approach their ideas from different perspectives. It facilitated our job to help the students go deeper on their problem of choice, communicate it with clarity and identify what would be a meaningful solution. We could witness the evolution of the ideas, that culminated in a pitch with creative storytelling. In the programs I organize, I'm used to give more “theory" before going into practice, but from this experience, I'll definitely put students into practice earlier in the process! The predation of my story was also more interactive than I was expecting. I presented my story twice, the first time was just an overview of the startup timeline, but the second time I dig deeper on the context and nuances of the decisions that I had to do and the available information at the moment. The students were interested, asked many questions, and I'm confident that they retained some key lessons, like that on academy you work most of the time with roughly 90% of certainty, while in an entrepreneurial journey, you are mostly dealing with 90% of UNcertainty. I'm very grateful for Mona Enell-Nilsson and Philipp Holtkamp for the invitation, and for OpenInnoTrain consortium for enabling this exchange.”