The Innovation and Entrepreneurship Unit of Athens University of Economics and Business (MoKE), the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Unit of National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) Greece Office aiming to reach and enhance this spirit within the Greek arena are jointly organizing a series of discussions under the title “The Spirit of Entrepreneurship”.

During these meetings entrepreneurs from Greece and Germany are invited to present and discuss their own personal experiences with young innovators in their first steps of business creation. At the same time, participants who are interested to take a first step as entrepreneur will have the chance to gain on knowledge and collect valuable mentoring hints.

The fields of future events in the “Spirit of Entrepreneurship” series will include sectors of specific relevance for the Greek economy:

• Health and Medical Technology
• Agro-Business and Food
• Tourism
• Creative Industry
• Famiy Business

On Monday, 09.02.2015, the new discussion series “The Spirit of Entrepreneurship” organized by the National and Technical University of Athens, Athens University of Economics and Business and the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Greece was launched. The event series aims to bring together founders with the special spirit that leads innovative thinking to entrepreneurial actions. The Panels are organized in order for Greek and international, junior as well as more experienced entrepreneurs to get together with prominent researchers, students and young startuppers. The discussants expose their entrepreneurial story as well as experiences and exchange practices, knowledge and shared challenges. Thus, the series provides its own innovation to the Greek entrepreneurship environment, striving for an intense knowledge exchange as well as community building among its participants.

The kick-off event focused on how to start up in the health, medical technology and pharmaceutical sector. Bio-Medicine Technologies stood at the center – a sector with the image of being less accessible as others. The presentations of the four startups and companies on the panel displayed in an impressive way the common challenges faced by founders of an enterprise – be it in Greece or in Germany.

The presentations of the first event came from Dr. Margret Moré, Regulatory Affairs Manager of DendroPharm GmbH in Berlin, Dr. Andreas Persidis, Co-Founder and CEO of Biovista in Greece, Dr. Ioannis Valavanis and Dr. Eleftherios Pilalis, both Co-founders of E-nios in Greece and Dr. Fay Christodoulou, Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Miroculus in San Francisco.

The moderator Mr Yannis Rizopoulos, journalist, coordinated a very interesting and interactive discussion with the participation of the audience, focusing on the main challenges when starting up a business in the health sector.

The main conclusions were two: There are differences in the institutions – universities, support of banks, entrepreneurship competitions, public entrepreneurship programs et al. – supporting the development of Start Ups in the different countries. But the intrinsic motivation of the company’s founder, the team dynamics, as well as the hard hours of work in order for the Start Up to be built, established and run, are the same.

Keep up with the event series “Spirit of Entrepreneurship” and the next event on Agro-Food Business which will take place on Tuesday March 31st.

You will find the video of the event here.

For more details here.