Yearly Archives: 2016

corporate entrepreneurship, innovation, Lean Startup, speaking

Why Corporates Engage with Startups @ Henkel

Henkel HQ, Düsseldorf

Recently I was invited by Henkel to keynote at “Henkel Startup-Day”, an internal innovation event at their HQ with +300 participants about why and how corporations engage with startups (and sometimes vice versa).

A participant describing my Keynote:

[…] Vidar Andersen, asked us to talk to a person we don’t know at all. A fairly easy task: I turned to the left and talked to a guy that was doing a dual course of studies with Henkel. At that moment he was writing about collaboration between companies and startups. Stunning, his enthusiasm and concentration paying attention to every single detail that was said. Andersen made one point clear that big companies have to be faster and adapt flexibly to startups’ pace in order to be successful. He also mentioned a splendid quote from Claus Schwab: “In the new world, it’s not the big fish that eats the small fish. It’s the fast fish that eats the slow fish”. With his funny sayings he made the audience laugh their ass off.  – Amina Mrad on Medium

These these were the slides I used:

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corporate entrepreneurship, Weird

Corporate Innovation – On Onassis’ Yacht

On a boat…

Who says corporate innovation has to be boring?

The office today… A yacht previously owned by Onassis.

I don’t often post about what we do with +ANDERSEN & ASSOCIATES for corporations and their innovation programs, because they don’t hire us for me to have yet another stage to talk about myself.

But from time to time I make an exception. This is one of those times.

Today, the office for the regular support and feedback session with the innovation teams of a Dutch corporate customer was a bit different.

It was on a yacht. And not any old yacht. A yacht previously owned by Onassis.

You might know I’m a huge opponent of running a corporate innovation theatre, so why a yacht as an office?

First of all, it’s important to get the innovation teams off-site, as far away from the long arm of daily operations for these kinds of sessions. (And as an added bonus, if you chose somewhere nice, it doesn’t hurt the inspiration of the teams.)

Secondly, we’re darn frugal. It was cheaper to rent the yacht than renting a off-site conference facility for the same day. Incredible!

The captain explaining the technology capabilities of the conference room…

 

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Education, pitching, startup

Pitch Please! with MTP Köln

Pitch Please! with MTP Köln @ STARTPLATZ Cologne 17.06.2017

Recently I was invited to coach and prepare the startups participating in the “Pitch Please!” event and we had a lot of fun.

Pitch Please! is a startup pitching event during the CAMPUS Startup-Days organized by MTP Cologne in cooperation with Hgnc – hochschulgründernetz cologne, Entrepreneurs Club Cologne – ECC, Gateway – Gründungsservice der Universität zu Köln and STARTPLATZ.

You can find more pictures from the event here.

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Events, pitching, startup

The 2nd Rheinland Pitch Summer Finals is a Success!

A record +1.000 audience at the Rheinland Pitch Summer Finals 2016 in buibui Bilk, Düsseldorf

The Rheinland Pitch is Germany’s largest continuously running startup pitching event since 2013. It’s a monthly startup pitching event, where regional startups in all phases are invited to apply. The selected startups (usually 7-12 per month) receive a full day of pitch coaching and help with their pitch decks for free (by me), pitching their results at the end of  the day. From those pitches we select the three best to put on stage a week later, in the evening on the last Monday of the month, in front of an audience of press, media, investors, students, entrepreneurs and the general public that selects the best pitch by public voting.

When Lorenz of STARTPLATZ (right) and I started with the Rheinland Pitch back in 2013, we never imagined it would become this big

Every six months, we have a best-of-the-best finals where the winners from the last preceding months are put on an even larger stage at an even larger event. At these events we also have an expert jury that counts for 50% of the votes. We call this the Rheinland Pitch Summer & Winter Finals.

Yesterday saw the second ever Rheinland Pitch Summer Finals (the first was also spectacular). And what an incredible finals it was! A record +1.000 audience came to see three best-of-the-best regional together with one wildcard winner pitch in front of the lord mayor of Düsseldorf and a top notch jury of experts.

Yours truly moderating at the Rheinland Pitch finals

 

The Lord Mayor of Düsseldorf, Thomas Geisel, was in the house – opening with some choice words about why startups are important

 

The 3rd place went to RadBonus (left) and Rise Technologies (right) shared the 3rd place.

 

Share DNC took 2nd place.

 

And the winner was Düsseldorf’s own Volunteer World!

You can find more images from the event here. (All images by Karina Vilenskaja, ©Digitale Stadt Düsseldorf)

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Education, entrepreneurship, startup

On the state of Startups in Rhineland

Düsseldorf, NRW Germany

Düsseldorf, NRW Germany

Gründerszene has interesting piece about the state of startups in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW) where I reside and have been championing as a great place to found your startup in since 2011. It is no wonder that people are wanting to invest in/buy startup stocks (Startup Aktien kaufen) to help businesses thrive.

I got asked about my opinion about the startup scene in Düsseldorf. Is it all roses?

Here’s the bit translated from German:

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