Entrepreneurs Wanted! The appeal of the Idea-Lab 2008

I arrived back in Munich after three days in Vallendar. It’s time to reconsider all the information and impressions of the Idea-Lab. The conference was perfectly organized – the WHU students have done a great job.

Beside all the speeches and workshops it was enough time to meet young entrepreneurs and to discuss their ideas and cases.

The conference was mainly about Internet start-ups, ideas and the young German entrepreneurial scene – which is growing! It was impressing for me to see and feel the strong willingness of all the students to become an entrepreneur and to start a company.

Retrospectively I got the feeling that web start-ups have been focused a bit too much during the sessions. All the speakers were talking about communities, web 2.0, ecommerce, social shopping, etc. Is this industry really that sexy in Germany? How many big Internet companies have we seen in Germany? What about IT, media, semiconductors, telecommunications, alternative energies, environmental technologies, and micro- and nano-technologie?

Honestly, there are more business cases beyond Internet cases. I strongly believe that if students from business schools (WHU, EBS, etc.) would frequently meet with students from technical universities in order to exchange ideas, inventions, concepts and business cases we would see some very interesting and promising businesses.

Nevertheless, the strong message at the Idea-Lab was more than positive – lets get started and grow your own business.