European Innovation Academy @studyitin-blog - Tumblr Blog

Thank you EIA2013! It was a lot of fun.

Until next year...

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Congratulations to the main prize winners of the European Innovation Academy 2013 on behalf of the IT Academy! We all hope that this awesome business idea will have a big future ahead of it.

The final gala night was full of giving out different awards and prizes and supporting a lot of other startups as well to help as many of them to develop further in the future. One of the best statements that night though was that the presentations and ideas presented by the EIA competitors had been better than the Latitude 59 ones. I can't agree more.

This picture and many other pictures of the night can be seen here.

Also, be sure to check out and show your support for the winning team's startup Facebook page.

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People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they do.

Quote from Jaan Tallinn's presentation at Latitude 59

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Latitude 59 and the last two days

For the last two days EIA was merged with a conference taking place at the same time at TUT called Latitude 59. The conference included several speakers from around the world, all of who were connected with startups and most of them with silicon valley as well.

For the EIA 2013 contestants it seemed to be either a day of rest or for those who were still in the competition, it was a day of final rehearsals. In the end it was nice to see how much support the final 10 teams (and later 5) had while presenting their startups.

Unfortunately I could not take any pictures myself during these two days, but the pictures can be found here and here.

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A big 1 minute timer - Check

Notes of things to remember to cover - Check

A consultant on stage helping with the pitching -Check

Nervous participants rehearsing their final pitches - Check.

The 10 successful groups who will make it to the next round will be revealed tomorrow. Out of those 10, 5 groups will be selected to pitch at the final gala event. Can't wait!

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The morning today started with a small blood test. All of the participants had the opportunity to take a test to find out about their health hazards and how they can keep healthy. Now we only have to wait til September and we will be able to learn a little about ourselves again.

Later on in the day, the groups will start pitching. It is weird to see how nervous and uneasy everyone seems, because only 10 groups will pass on from today.

Good luck to everyone!

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Today is a health revolution day!

Will be posting pictures of the event later today.

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Good luck to all the groups today with their pitching!

I can't believe how close the end is already.

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We have a small surprise for everyone at the Innovation Academy tomorrow. Just a small teaser for you.

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marmalademountain

US Ambassador to Estonia presenting Berkeley instructor Ken Singer. #eia (at Tallinna Tehnikaülikool | Tallinn University of Technology)

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9 out of 10 buyers say when they are ready to buy, they will find you.

Data from David Balazic's presentation ''IT Market Evolution''

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Day 10: Tai chi and marketing.

The day started with a nice little surprise. When I got to the venue, there was a little robot on stage moving around and talking. I never thought that I could think of a robot as something cute, but it really was. After the robot's little workout session, we had our own as well. Before sitting down to listen to a lecture about marketing, we did some tai chi for a change. There was one brave volunteer on stage and everyone was following his movements in the hall. It was a nice little morning stretch session.

After the tai chi, there was a lecture from David Balazic on the IT market evolution. He compared traditional marketing to online marketing and presented us with a lot of interesting data. He also introduced us to the fast growing trend of cloud computing and its many features.

In the end of the morning lecture I walked around and looked at all the prototypes that were taped to the wall. There are pictures of these online as well (the link is in the previous post), but it was still cool to see them.

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aaghasey

Prototyping Madness Session

aaghasey

July 10: Learning that failure is the key to success and running meetings efficiently

Today’s workshops began with the topic of FAILURE. At first when I think of failure, I just want to not think about any times I failed in my life. Before the workshop, I thought of failure to be a regret in my life.

Then students came up to share their stories of when they thought they failed and as a result of these experiences, they have prevented failure to happen again in these circumstances. Failure does bring light to life in that it teaches you a valuable lesson to not make mistakes again and move forward in the direction of success.

Our team applied this concept to our product idea that we were trying to come up with. Since our concept completely transformed from what it was on Day One and we were still in the process of finding a painpoint to address and solve as our start up project, we thought we failed because we sill didn’t have an idea. However, we learned that we shouldn’t rush into an idea without careful consideration and team support from the group.

Chris Burry provided us great input on how to prepare working with potential customers for our product. He gave us a guideline to follow especially on how to sell our ideas effectively. Some ways include creating a story to capture the customer’s feelings and emotions to want the product.

Following the customer needs, we also discussed team needs and how to manage meetings effectively and efficiently. Chris Burry provided us with guideline to run meeting agendas, prepare for them, and execute them in a solid way.

Today’s lessons: let failure be a motivating factor for success and efficiency is key in every aspect of the start up life.

Beginning of week 2: its all about prototyping.

The day started with an introduction to paper prototyping and by the end of the day, everyone had to have a prototype ready for their product. The whole lecture was about the different types of prototyping and included some hand drawn slides. During the talk, the lecturer also managed to prove that all of this is definitely not a waste of time and it is better to do it by hand and approach it creatively rather than spending a lot of time on it and building a perfect prototype on a computer program. Looking through all of the prototypes that the groups made I can say that I am really excited to see the final presentations because the ideas look very good. It would be pointless for me to upload them all here, so instead just go and see them by yourself: http://paperprototypingateia.wordpress.com/session-3/madness-prototyping-1/

Also, I very much like the fact that all the participants are becoming more active on social media websites and are sharing their ideas. I find the #EIA2013 tweets more entertaining every time I check them.