In celebration of Moldova’s inaugural participation in Global Entrepreneurship Week, GLOW/TOBE and Junior Achievement organized the first “Innovation Weekend” at the economic university Academia de Studii Economice a Moldovei (ASEM) in Chisinau. The event offered 60 Moldovan high school students the opportunity to learn and practice the process of understanding the problems of a customer segment and creating a business model around desirable solutions. Trained and coached by Moldovan Junior Achievement volunteers all-day Saturday (24.11.2013), the teams of high school students then rushed to test and refine their products before Sunday afternoon’s final pitch competition. As the final event of Global Entrepreneurship Week in Moldova, each of the ten Innovation Weekend teams presented their business models and customer feedback to a panel of local entrepreneurs and professionals. Participant Iana Basarab spoke on behalf of her peers in appreciation of Innovation Weekend’s impact, saying, “thank you very much for giving our generation the possibility to learn, because the better we understand innovation now, the greater things we will do in the future to improve our country.”
Kicking off the event at 8:30
on Saturday morning, students from all over Moldova gathered at ASEM and were
formally welcomed by the organizers before hearing from engaging guest speaker Anton
Perkin, the Co-Founder and CEO of FusionWorks.
Perkin shared his story of becoming an entrepreneur in Moldova and encouraged
the student teams to see their imaginations as the only limit to their
potential. Following this, the students split into teams and met with
their Junior Achievement (JA) and GLOW/TOBE (G/T) volunteer leaders.
These Moldovan JA leaders, supported by American G/T volunteers, then
trained their teams in the Lean Startup methodology using the Lean Canvas, a
modern business tool designed to enable entrepreneurs to quickly sketch the
most critical aspects of a new venture into a one-page model. Working
into the early hours of Sunday morning, these teams identified specific
problems faced by particular groups of individuals and used the nine boxes of
the Lean Canvas to effectively construct an innovative and profitable solution
using a new product or service.
After a
quick breakfast in the ASEM Cafeteria, the teams were back to work on Sunday
morning. This time, teams were encouraged to “get out of the building”
and walk the streets of Chisinau to speak with Moldovans fitting their proposed
business’s target customer profile in order to gather feedback regarding the
team’s problem assumptions and proposed solution. Reconvening at ASEM,
the teams then compared notes and made changes (“iterations”) to improve their
business models before presenting to the judges. Each team was provided
seven minutes to pitch their idea and respond to questions from the judging
panel, which was composed of representatives from Moldova Agroindbank,
Entranse, StarNet, ACED, and AdAstra. From carbon filtration units to a
new social media site for rural youth, a wide variety of locally-viable
products and services were proposed. At the end of the day, there were
many tired smiles as teams discussed how to continue developing their ideas in
the weeks to come. The two days passed by quickly and were only the first
step in the participants’ journey toward entrepreneurship. However, these
60 students proved that an innovative spirit thrives in them, and in Moldova.
To view
photos of Innovation Weekend 2013, please see the following link: http://on.fb.me/1hL3hgU
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