Young Innovative Entrepreneurs showcased in the Barents Reunion

For the sixth year in a row Barents Reunion convention gathered influential people of the Barents area together on June 12th and 13th in Tornio, Finland. The topic for the 2013 convention was "Transforming trade barriers into boundless opportunities". The annual convention’s goal is to increase networking and cooperation among the people living in the Barents region. 

This year as a part of Barents Reunion convent Young Innovative Entrepreneurs project organized a Youth Workshop for it's participants. YIE’s participants Denis Kreminskiy, Heidi Andreassen and Mattias Johansson got a chance to make an appearance also in the Barents Reunion convent’s general program.

The future of the Barents region was discussed

The workshop kicked off by brainstorming the challenges and opportunities of the Barents region. The idea was to think how we could turn the existing challenges into opportunities in the future.

Some of the most important discussion topics were growing the attraction of the Barents region so that the talented youth of the area would prefer staying here in the future and how to make the Barents region better known globally.

It was great to see that at the end of the first workshop session the list of opportunities of the Barents region became much longer than the list of challenges.

After brainstorming together the participants of the workshop divided into two groups to discuss different matters: people, resources, technology, infrastructure and globality.

YIE’s young entrepreneurs and students also got a remarkable chance to present the results of the Youth Workshop in the Barents Reunion convention.

The presentation raised up issues about the future and developing of the Barents region from the young people’s perspective. As a part of the presentation a new Facebook page, Connecting Barents, was launched. The page is meant for networking and cooperating

between the people of the Barents region.

The founder of Ikea and also Barents Reunion convent Ingvar Kamprad was so impressed of the presentations that he wanted to personally thank the youth of the Barents.

Double victory for YIE’s participant Yngve Bergheim

Barents Reunion convention always culminates in awarding the Barents Entrepreneur of the Year and the Barents Young Entrepreneur of the Year. The awards are given to entrepreneurs who during the year have carried out unique achievements in the Barents area and who inspire others.

The criteria for the winners are: currently live in the Barents region; set a good example in terms of values; be an ambassador for the region; display creativity beyond the ordinary; and actively work to increase cross-border cooperation within the region. For the Young Entrepreneur award the individual has to be under 35 years.

This year the winner of the Barents Young Entrepreneur of the Year was chosen by the YIE project and winner of the Barents Entrepreneur of the Year was chosen by Ingvar Kamprad. Both parties were very mutual because the winner of the both awards was Yngve Bergheim from Ramsalt Lab (Tromsø, Norway)!

Morten Brugård and Saila Vaara celebrating with Yngve Bergheim.

Yngve Bergheim has been actively involved in YIE project from the beginning and has even found a business partner through the project from Murmansk, Russia (Denis Kreminskiy, Arctic Turn). He emphasizes that this kind of cooperation would have never been possible without the YIE project and the matchmaking events that has been organized for the participants.

Bergheim wanted to thank especially Ramsalt Lab's co-founder, Martin Lund, and Morten Brugård for choosing him to be a part of the YIE project. Of course he also thanks YIE project and all it's participants.

Read more about the convention and Yngve Bergheim's awards from Barents Observer or Yle Perämeri.

Check out more photos from the event!

2nd matchmaking event in Murmansk

The second international matchmaking event of the Young InnovativeEntrepreneurs project took place in Murmansk (Russia) the weekend from 24^th to 25^th of May 2013. The objective of this event was to gather the entrepreneurs who are participating actively in the project within their respective countries. The main purpose is to matchmake them into cross-border cooperation with their companies, so in that way combat the migration of the young people from Barents region to the southern parts of the countries.

The conference was two days long, where entrepreneurs had the chance to visit Russian companies and develop their skills and knowledge of Russian companies and how to develop business in Murmansk region.

During the first day we could hear a success story from a Norwegian entrepreneur, Tage Sæther from Murmansktorgsnabservice JSC, who started trade fish between Norway and Russia. It was a useful and an interesting story which gave motivation to a lot of entrepreneurs, who listened to the experiences from this young Norwegian entrepreneur.  On the same day YIE entrepreneurs participated on a business simulation. They were separated by groups, so it was much easier to visit to the different places, where they developed and learned how to start a business in the Murmansk region. They also had the chance at the same time to visit Kola partneriat, a business fair which was held the same weekend than the matchmaking conference.

During the Friday afternoon, there were visiting to companies such Industrialpark SIVA, which is a business incubator, a consulting company NetSL, and also the designing studio of one of our Russian entrepreneurs, Alexandra Gapanovich, and the Youth House Mr. Pink (Murmansk branch of Barents YouthFilm Academy).

The objective of the second day of conference was to exchange the experiences from the first day. The entrepreneurs were separated again in work groups in order to discuss the barriers in cross-border business and business in general according to the information gained through the business simulation game and the visits to the companies.  After the work groups, the entrepreneurs had the time to discuss the result of the conference with everybody else and talk about the development of cross-border business.

On Saturday evening it was time for the farewell dinner, were most of the project partners and young entrepreneurs attended and shared a nice evening together.

Nowadays all the entrepreneurs are looking forward the next matchmaking conference which will be held in Kirkenes, Norway, during this autumn.

Click here and check out some photos from the matchmaking conference in Murmansk!