First national educational event held in Norway

Young Innovative Entrepreneurs in Norway had its first educational event at Sommarøya outside of Tromsø. The goal of event was to anchor the participants within the group while creating enthusiasm and inspiration, networking and co-creation of value.

The Norwegian participants in the Kolartic funded Young Innovative Entrepreneurs was gathered in Tromsø and went to Sommarøya by bus. The event was kicked off by an inspirational speech by Kjell-Ove Hveding, host at Sommarøy Artic Hotel. The presentation was based around positive thinking and how to spot opportunities. Kjell-Ove employed what is known as North-Norwegian narrative art, a skill set which is highly thought of in Norway, in his presentation.

Then the Norwegian project manager presented the project and its financiers, and his thoughts on the project and what the projects aimed to achieve. All participants also got a task to share their opinions on the project and what they wanted to achieve by participating.

At the end of the first day we discussed the importance of entrepreneurship, and how an innovative and competitive business community is dependent on competitions from new companies to be benchmarked continuously and maintain their competitive power. Entrepreneurship is about seeing and seizing opportunities. The natural elongation of this was to talk about the opportunities in the region. We talked about increased biomass in the Barents Sea, The Northers Sea Route, oil and gas, minerals, to mention some. These opportunities may seem intangible to young entrepreneurs and therefore it is important to understand the more tangible opportunities which arise from these huge opportunities in the region.

The second day all participants joined together in smaller groups and practiced presenting themselves for the group as a whole. When all were ready and had practiced their presentations we had a plenary session where all presented themselves and what area of business they were involved in. This turned out to be an exciting session where several participants did not only talk about themselves, but also what they wanted from the project.

As a conclusion of the special entrepreneurial part of the programme we focused on creativity and planning. These are two subjects which are not often mentioned in the same sentence, but are of great importance if good ideas are to be brooded and hatched. We also had a short session on how this can be implemented in a business plan.

Finally we had a team building event where the participants learned about their personal comfort zones and how to reach outside of them as well as how group dynamics work.

To sum it up it was a successful event where the participants where anchored within the group, and new impulses and enthusiasm were created. We are looking forward to the continuation!
     
 -Morten