A blend of creative entrepreneurs - Entrepreneurship 2016

‘Imagine, you crashed on Mars with a spaceship, and you only have a teddy bear, a bottle of perfume and a razor at hand to return to mother earth. What would you do?’ It is one of the many wondrous questions that the second year students were confronted with during the Entrepreneurship event of the Honours College in cooperation with TalentWeb Groningen.

The evening took place in the Big Building, behind the Central Station. The former Sorting Office of PostNL has been a ‘start-up factory’ since 2015, providing office space for many small and large creative entrepreneurs. The ideal place for an innovative evening with the talent development program ‘Pick your own Talent’ at heart, which is spread over the whole Honours Bachelor programme. When entering the building, you bump into an organ, a Stormtrooper guards the computer space and Jolijn Creutzberg of 'Van Hulley' opens the evening on a stage of beer crates. At first sight a silly surrounding. But during the evening, the ambiance takes hold of you. Everywhere around you, you hear the stories of twenty enthusiastic –often a bit lunatic- workshop leaders of Talent Web Groningen. And soon you realize: this is a place where creativity blends together.

Most students start a bit reserved with their first workshop. Only 15 minutes per round is scheduled, and everybody is subdivided at random in the five different workshops. But many students rapidly shake this of: the high rate and the peculiar assignments show you different perspectives of entrepreneurial behavior. Take the example of the teddy bear, the bottle of perfume and the razor: this thought experiment makes you seek for a creative solution with that which is at hand. That’s how it happens in the real world. Though the circumstances might seem at least challenging, you make the best out of it! Maybe this will be the golden tip for your own enterprise.

In another room, you hear curious noises: ‘Zap!’ ‘Pow!’ ‘Whooptidoo!’. A group of students is making wild arm movements while jumping up and down, they are ‘daring to be playful’. A major contrast with the concentrated looks on the faces of a group nearby, where students discuss how to combine the fun and important activities in their busy student lives. A little further afield, the dialogue is about attaining goals that seem beyond reach. A golden tip is proclaimed here as well: ‘Imagine you really want to get the girl/boy you are in love with. You will get him/her! The same holds for your business goals, go for it and you will find a way!’. In the workshop Turbo Composition students create a musical masterpiece in short time by working together intensively. Ideas like ‘Maybe we should put a little grunting in here?’ result in surprising compositions. And so we can go on for a while with listing all the various workshops.

The Entrepreneurship event briefly pulled many Honours student out of their comfort zone. It was an evening filled with teamwork, laughter, pondering, letting go and always with a golden tip for your own entrepreneurial dreams at the end. Besides, no one got lost in the maze of the Big Building: you will find a way!

Jet Swart

Organizing student-assistant Honours College