Global Entrepreneurship Week, Maastricht 2013

We started this blog almost one year ago when we were both in need of inspiration and at that time we had one goal in mind: to write about good people, those who follow their passion, who live a meaningful life, and who dream big. We are constantly looking for role models and for visionary people who stand out from the crowd because of their achievements and we are very happy that somehow we get to meet these people and to learn from them. Last week, the brunette half of the blog had the opportunity to participate at the conference "Global Entrepreneurship Week" held in Maastricht, The Netherlands and she would like to share her experience with you. 

"I attended GEW for the first time and I must say I was amazed to see so many inspiring people gathered in one place to celebrate the success of the fearless entrepreneurs who defied the traditional business model and built their own companies through a lot of hard work. The guest list has been quite long and impressive. I had the chance to listen to Mr Thorsten Jelinek, Associate Director of World Economic Forum, Vidar Andersen, a serial entrepreneur and one of the top 5 must-known people in the German start-up scene, Mr Jo Martens, CEO Nascom, Ms Saskia Vossenberg, professor at Maastricht University, Mr Max Loesll, founder of Agrilution, Mr Florian Schneider, Business developer at Nerdalize, Ms Janneke Nielsen, Chief Innovation Officer at Improve Digital, Mr Jan Scheele, TEDx Organizer, Mr Marc Post, Head of Physiology and creator of the "in vitro" burger and many others. Each of them had a great story to tell and I will share their stories with you in our future posts.

Now, to go back to the event, you should know that the conference took place in Sint Janskerk, a beautiful Gothic church built in 15th century which now hosts different cultural events throughout the year. If you ever pass by Maastricht, you should visit it, especially because it is situated in the center, in Vrijthof Plaats. The conference started with a panel discussion regarding "The New European Plan" which brought to everyone's attention the European education system that doesn't support the entrepreneurial mindset as it does in USA. Statistics show that European students are much more risk adverse than Americans and also less entrepreneurial. Mr Vidar Andersen, who was recently invited to Stanford University to receive a Lean Launchpad instructor training by Steve Blank, said: "there are so many wrong things taught in our universities and I would like to change that". Ms Saskia Vossenberg, a Researcher on gender gap in entrepreneurship and an entrepreneur herself mentioned that Europe lacks in terms of right structures and organisms that could support female entrepreneurs. A very good remark was made by Mr Jo Martens, CEO Nascom who highlighted two major traits that are fundamental for a successful entrepreneur: growth mindset and empathy. In his words, every entrepreneur needs not only to learn constantly but also to share the knowledge and teach other people. He also added that a big mistake most of the people who start their own business make is that they don't have a vision and a mission. Every entrepreneur should have a meaningful purpose when setting up their companies,  and not just a financial purpose to make money and get rich.

Following this interesting debate, more speakers took the floor and presented their innovative projects such as vertical farming, cube satellite concept, heating with computer power and other out-of-the-box ideas. You will be able to learn more about these start-ups in a future post where I will give more details about each project. In the meanwhile I will leave you with some photos provided by Maastricht Centre for Entrepreneurship. Congratulations to the fantastic organizing team and a special thanks to Ana and Julia. It was awesome!"

Love,
Laura&Elena