Pier Abetti’s course Creation of Innovative SME’s has accelerated some very familiar companies for Aaltoes people. Powerkiss, A21 Cocktail Lounge, SEOS and Selki Fabrik all originate from the course. This spring, a new set of students will have the possibility to kick-start their ideas.

- The main objective of the course is to teach participants the critical process of new venture idea creation & evaluation. After the course participants are equipped to evaluate the potential of their idea and the challenges of implementation, says Matti Santala, the teaching assistant of the course.

Since its beginning Creation of Innovative SMEs has been all about the importance of interdisciplinary cooperation and bridging of different fields of expertise in order to achieve a common goal. This is supported by practice oriented lectures and cases.

No more small scale

Creation of Innovative SMEs is not for lifestyle entrepreneurs – It’s about making ideas happen and making them grow.

- This course is great for two main reasons: Pier Abettis unmatched, incredible depth of experience, energy and charisma , as well as the approach of the course, which engages participants in open sharing of ideas and learning to develop the ideas during the 4 intensive weeks of the course.

There have been a lot of memorable events during the 8 years Matti has assisting Pier Abotti with the course. Every year is unique as the participants, their ideas, ambition and drive shape the learning journey for everyone.

- One memorable case in 2005 was presented by designer Solange Ruz, who questioned the idea of coffins and pushed forward an idea about design coffins. I think it played out well and succeeded in questioning the prevailing system, even thought the idea didn´t materialize, Matti recalls.

- I would recommend the course for anyone interested in working in/with a new venture, small company or business development unit. And especially I would recommend the course for anyone playing with potential business ideas.

Creation of Innovative SMEs offered to all university students in the Greater Helsinki area. Please register for the course before 20.4. by e-mail at: matti.santala@hse.fi For registering send your name, the name of your university, your e-mail address and phone number. The maximum number of participants is 30 students. Download the course brochure or check the website at https://cie.hkkk.fi/25D031/

This post is a part of a series that will seek to find the most entrepreneurial courses in Aalto University. Have a course in mind? Drop us a line.

Year 2010 looks like an exciting year for Aaltoes. With the building blocks in place and a bunch of new people bringing in their energy, anything can happen. On Tuesday the Ventures Park was filled with buzz as some 30 aspiring board and team members discussed what Aaltoes did in 2009 and more importantly, what will it be doing in 2010.

The new board will be elected on December 15th. If you have friends who would be interested in joining, please invite them to Nolla this Thursday to hear out more.

Here are some of the frequently asked questions for those who didn’t make it:

What is Aaltoes?
Student run organization promoting entrepreneurship and helping students to set up companies within up coming Aalto University in Finland. More? See the slidedeck or contact anyone from the board 2009. P.S AES is now Aaltoes, same thing, different abbreviation.

What does board membership require? What does it include? How many board members are selected?
Aaltoes is a registered association, so that brings some requirements for the work, but otherwise the board is free to choose the way they organise themselves. The rules state that the board should have 4-10 members and that all boardmembers need to student of Aalto University.

The board 2009 had some basic roles laid out (IT, accounting, school-relations etc.) and met almost every week. In 2009 99% of the effort was put on executing, and 1% on administrative stuff, but the board 2010 might face different challenges.

We are looking for an enthusiastic team that understands that Aaltoes is essentially a startup. We need people with different skillsets and a drive to redefine the role of entrepreneurship in universities. The plus side? A rollercoaster year full of new connections, mentoring,  trips and possibilities that would be out of the reach otherwise. Ask for more info from the board or team 2009, we’d be happy to share.

What is the difference between a team member and board member?
Only slight differencies – the board meetings are open to everyone and traditionally the team members have been very independent in organising events and taking initiative. Board members of course have a little more responsibilities in coordinating things and they f.ex represent Aaltoes to the media.

What happens to the 2009 board and team?
We’ll all be around, no drastic changes. This means personal mentoring for the new board, but also participating in the everyday activities just as this year.

Who can vote for the board 2010?
Registered members. If you haven’t yet, go register at http://aaltoes.com/aes/members/

What other ways are there to participate?
Form a company. See our existing startups in http://aaltoes.com/aalto-startups/ and join the crowd.

How do you help startups?
Change the culture and introduce the resources: in practice organising events, providing a community of likeminded people and, in the future, guiding the ideas to Aalto Ventures Park to become real businesses.

What plans have you for the year 2010?
Tons! Our notebooks are filled with ideas, but we want the new board to also have room to make their own decisions. Some gossip: gaming-industry event, social entrepreneurship event, entrepreneur in residence for Aalto VP, 24h camps, student guide for startups… And what do we wish for year 2010? Growth (and exits) for our startups. Forming new startups and helping them grow is our only reason of  existing. Next year we’d love to see the Aaltoes accelerated startups hit it big time.

More questions? Shoot!

Do you want to change the world towards the better? Welcome to Be A Change 2009 in Helsinki, 14-15 of November 2009 in Design Factory! All Aaltoes startups with a social agenda should attend, since the core idea is to realize social enterprise ideas into real sustainable businesses.

Be A Change is a two-day conference organized by AIESECers that will help you start a social enterprise! The main idea of the conference is that it gives people who are interested in saving the world, in a way or another, a chance to be innovative and get an opportunity to collaborate with others who share the same passion. There will be a Grand Jury assessing your business idea and Be A Change facilitators to develop and help you. Other delegates will also help you because you will collaborate and innovate together and you will also build a network of people, that you can make use of.

It doesn’t matter from where you come, everybody is welcome! If you need a place to stay AIESEC is organazing free accommodation in Helsinki for you. And you don’t even need to have your own idea to participate. If you are interested in social matters and making business with it, you are warmly welcome! We want everybody to join the collaboration and be creative!

For registration, send your contact information to beachange2009@gmail.com. When this mail is received we will send you instructions for how to pay the delegate fee of 15 euro. When you have paid the fee you are signed up. Voluntary: If you already have an business idea and want to prepare yourself and us for the event you can fill in the attached Delegate Application and send it to the same address as above. This is NOT compulsory for signing up!

For further information, contact beachange2009@gmail.com or call Julia at +358 (0) 44 567 96 44. Remember to check out our homepage at www.beachange.org

Miss us while we’re gone? No worries – there are two great events taking place next week on Tuesday 27th October in both Turku and Tampere. Aaltoes actives, collect a bunch of friends together for a roadtrip and check out what’s happening in the pitching events of Aaltoes sister organization Boost Turku and Stream Tampere.

STREAM Tampere

STREAM Tampere is a new learning and innovation community for entrepreneurial and growth minded people. It is a student initiative aimed at connecting ideas and know-how across traditional academic boundaries.

The key concepts behind STREAM are innovative solutions, unexpected connections, getting things done and learning from each other. We also believe in openness to new ideas, light structures and a global mindset. Right now we are finding cool people and building concrete structures to make this all a reality.
Register to the Pitch Event at Facebook
Visit the Stream facebook page

BOOST Turku
Student-run community for entrepreneurial people from Turku University, Åbo Akademi and Turku School of Economics.

FORUM. Boost Turku is a student-based network for young entrepreneurs sharing knowledge among the universities of Turku. Our aim is to create more startups!

SCIENCE OF DOING. We believe in doing. Doing in an open and laid back cross-faculty environment. We believe that in this way we can expand the networks and horizons of young like-minded people.

MENTORS AND CONNECTIONS. We also want to introduce mentoring to young entrepreneurs. We’d like to see Boost in the frontline of creating more value by providing connections of mentors, funding and team members.

Register to the Pitch Event at Facebook.
Visit also the Boost page.

SLUSH 2009 from Popagenda/Vesa Salmi on Vimeo.

Some Bazaar and Aalto Entrepreneurship Society are proud to invite you to SLUSH 2009 on Nov 3rd and 4th at Kaapelitehdas in Helsinki. There are three ways to participate in this event:

1) Take part in the making of Slush – get an inside look into the event as well as some free refreshments. Participate in the building team on 2nd Nov and/or the backstage crew during the event by contacting Valeria at valeria.gryada (add at-mark) gmail.com. The building team and backstage crew have guaranteed access to both days of Slush.

2) The event is free of charge for all students, but we can admit only a limited number of applications, so act quickly and register at www.slushhelsinki.com/tickets. Registration is very important – we’ll have a badge for you at the door.

3) Apply for Slush Seven competition with your idea and get a chance to make your idea reality and win prize money to fund your busines development. Signup by 30.10. at http://slushhelsinki.com/index.php?article_id=1441&_subm_=1

So what is Slush? If you are a budding entrepreneur and would like to showcase your business idea, or simply thinking about making it big on your own, then come and join us. Nov 3rd is dedicated to Talkoot – a venue where experts of various fields are on hand to lend a hand. All without a charge as Talkoot should be. So if you are taking your first steps to become the next Finnish success story, but would need some (peer) support and help, come join us.

For those of you who already have a company with international ambitions, the Talkoot day on the 3rd will include an Internationalisation Clinic hosted by Culminatum oy. There are slots for 15 2-hour promising and ambitious companies. Signup today!

To learn more about Slush go to www.slushhelsinki.fi and get information by signing up to the Slush Facebook group.

See You at Talkoot! The Facebook event can be found at http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/event.php?eid=68214196217&ref=ts

Pitching events for this fall are a wrap. All together 23 ambitious startups presented their ideas – some of them get to join us in Stanford, others in Slush. Tonight’s winners, UniMerchandise aims at making the affiliate products for Finnish Universities a lot more appealing.

The winning pitch got praised by the judges, Moaffak Ahmed, Kalle Airo and Teemu Seppälä, for its hands-on approach and can-do attitude. Sometimes the simple ideas are the best ones.

- Our business idea started with one question: why aren’t there any high-quality merchandises for universities in Finland, say for instance sweatshirts? We came up with the idea already last spring and tried to sell it to the student union of HSE with little luck, describes Jens Sørensen.

– Two weeks back we called the people responsible for Aalto University communications, but they didn’t have the time to think about the branded merchandises. This is where our company comes in. The Stanford trip is going to be very beneficial for us, we’ll get to see the whole merchandise business model of both Stanford and Berkley University, continues Joonatan Lintala.

The roll-out plan for the boys is straight-forward.

- Next year you’ll probably find us selling some great Aalto merchandise in the HSE, TKK and TaiK lobbies, the winning team concludes.

Stay tuned for the next Pitching Event in February. We’ll also be doing a follow-up on the so far presented ideas: how are the some 30 Aaltoes Pitching ideas we’ve heard about doing after the event? What, if anything, has happened since? Many of the pitching ideas are looking for feedback, team-members or mentors, so keep your mind open when attending the events!

RESULTS AND PITCHERS

The winner is UniMerchandise followed by World Health Hub, Futuuns and VirtualReception, which will all get to attend Slush Helsinki.

All pitchers (thanks @LisaGri for the recaps!)

NextDesire (Sivakumar K.) – Device for in-store use for making it easier to make choices.

UniMerchandise (Joonatan Lintala and Jens Sørensen – Branding the merchandise for unis using high quality and well-known brands.

BreezeTags (Igor Burattini) – Easy way of sharing internet links. Saving info & contacts from online directly on mobile phone.

SoftFlash (Olga Kuznetsova) – Digitally matching the retailers’ database to shoppers’ sizes.

VirtualReception (Aleksander Asatiani) – better booking online service for hotels in native language.

Futuuns (Teemu Yli-Hollo) – Web service for professional audio producers

StoreReview (Jori Lallo) – Online stores review by customers for customers.

SocialMediaShaman (Tuukka Takala) – Group dynamics of social networks members.

WorldHealthHub (Sami Paju) – Professional network for sharing scientific research in medicine

QualitySeer (Antti Hätinen) – AI program for determining best working practices for sotware development companies.

Want to innovate and create a new business, but haven’t found a technology to do it with? No problem! AES is organizing a Safari together with the Technical Research Center of Finland (VTT – www.vtt.fi) and Aalto University. It’s an event where you can get in touch with research teams and their latest inventions.

Interested in fibre-based barrier materials or holographic effects for consumer goods? The theme for this year’s Safari is clean technology, so all the patents will be related to the rising cleantech industry. Come think about ways to commercialise these patents to make the world a cleaner place. Each idea is first presented individually to the audience. After the presentations Safari begins and all participants get access to the presenters.

What can you do?

1. Think of existing problems and challenges in the world related to waste, pollution, energy efficiency, etc.
2. Get familiar with the ideas in the Cleantech Safari presentation list:
- Fibre-based barrier materials for (consumer goods) packages
- Sustainable holographic effects for consumer goods
- Navigational information to electronic chart systems for visualization
- Lightweight context recognition platform for mobile devices
- Production and application of graphene and graphene-based hybrid materials for electronics
- Selecting an access network in a seamless and intelligent way
- Printed energy harvesting system for consumer appliances
- Reduction of CO2 emmissions from steel plants by using steelmaking slags
- Biological treatment of metal containing wastes

Don’t think too much of the technological details, you will be able to talk with the researchers at the Safari. Try to think about general concepts. Be innovative!

3. Get help and form a team with your friends. Search for information together.
4. Come to the Cleantech Safari and talk with the idea presenters. If you have good business ideas for the technology, try to arrange meetings with the presenter and develop the idea.
5. Create a good business concept for the idea. If the concept is good enough, you can get funding to get started. Come to pitch the idea at the next Aaltoes Pitch event.
6. Make the world a cleaner place with your new technology, team and business idea!

Schedule for the evening

17:00 Event Starts, open networking
17:30 Opening speech
- Welcome, Aaltoes
- VTT and VTT Ventures
- TULI-programme
18:00 Presentations of ideas: 5 min 5 slides
19:00 Safari starts – Networking
20:30 Results of the surve
21:00 End of the event

UPDATE: After yesterday’s brainstorming we decided to put out a idea sourcing page. Use the widget on the right to submit ideas or go to specific page located at feedback.aaltoes.com to submit your ideas!

It’s exciting times here on Betonimiehenkuja. Aaltoes just got the keys to its new 1000 square meter space last Tuesday and we’ve been working hard to get things running. Our objective is to put together a plan for the new Aalto Ventures Park by the end of the year.

Imagine a space where startups can work together and benefit from shared services, close proximity to the Design Factory and Otaniemi campus, an incoming flow of students, professors, international visitors, alumni and experienced entrepreneurs, and a positive and encouraging environment.

The plan is not to build an incubator – there are plenty of those in Finland already. We aim to support startups in their early exploratory stages – while they’re learning about the market, pitching for funding, developing their product, finding first customers and looking for team members. We’re still working on what Aalto Ventures Park will
be in practice, but we have a space, an energetic team and a vision of making something big that serves the needs of Aalto University’s entrepreneurial community.

We’re kicking off with a bang; our inaugural event will have some of the world’s best speakers on entrepreneurship – Ken Morse and Bill Aulet.

The founder and former Managing Director of MIT Entrepreneurship Center Ken Morse and acting Managing Director Bill Aulet are holding an interactive lecture for us next Sunday night the 11th of October at 17.00. The session is themed around what is hot and what is not in entrepreneurship – what entrepreneurship is, what traits successful entrepreneurs share and how to go about becoming an entrepreneur and building a startup.

It’s been great to show people the Ventures Park space, see their reactions and listen to their first thoughts on how to use the space to build a new venture accelerator. Join us Sunday night for the MIT Entrepreneurship Session, followed by refreshments and a brainstorming on what the new Aalto Ventures Park could be. We want your feedback!