On 4th December, Mr. Laurynas Braškus, Innovation Manager-Consultant at the "Sunrise Valley Science and Technology Park" gave an open lecture “Start-up team formation and leadership”. The lecture was moderated by Lidija Kraujalienė, lecturer at the Department of Business Technologies and Entrepreneurship (The Faculty of Business Management).
The lecture was organized for national and international students, studying subjects: “Design Thinking of Start-ups” (liet. – ”Startuolių kūrimas”), “Project preparation and evaluation” (liet. – “Projektų rengimas ir vertinimas”), and for other guests.
The first and most crucial factors forming the start-up are the right team members. Usually this process starts from the leaders who believe in the idea so badly, that would motivate the rest of the team to go after him too. Team leader are able to inspire others, leaders are the ones to make everything clear from the vision, mission and strategy point of you, so you would never ask „why?“ we are making this to happen.
Laurynas noted that start-ups must to have at least one team member with good abilities to sell (sales person), a part of the other essential members as designer, engineer, marketing specialist and so on. In forming the team for execution all essential specialists should be attached and directed “to sell” the idea too.
Business models are invented long time ago, so for the start-ups Mr. L. Braskus suggests do not invent “new” business models since the first day, but rather choose the already existing one which are already checked and will work well for a start-up.
Laurynas has also presented the best-performing CEOs in the world 2017, who are the leaders and ranked not by financial performance only, thus the ESG ratings became a strong factor for Pablo ISLA (INDITEX), Martin SORRELL (WPP), Jensen HUANG (NVIDIA), Jacques ASCHENBROICH (VALEO), Bernard ARNAULT (LVMH) to be TOP listed in this year. The fields in which they are working are very different: the retail of fashion chains, information technologies for games production, multinational advertising and public relations, automotive, multinational conglomerates of luxuries, etc.
Interesting fact is that all successful people failed many times before they achieved success. The best way to collect the experience is failing and taking valuable experience as a good practice for your start-up. Mr. L. Braškus explained why start-up usually fails in the first year of their existence. It happens for such reasons as: 1) not enough market research done about the customer (“there is no market”), 2) created product or service is not verified with real potential clients (“get out and check”), 3) Start-up do not really know well their customer (“my costumer is everybody”), 4) team issues like not the right team members are on board.
How to be successful? Laurynas has provided some insights, like: do differently, go for creativity, change the place of living and experience, do not afraid to explore deeper surrounding place and people, because your actions could change the world. Students have also gotten some videos of the most inspirational speeches.
In any way, start-ups are intended for creation and testing ideas, technologies, research, in other words – to experience the new actions for existing human problems. For instance, Facebook is solving “communication” problem, Google – “information needs” problem, Amazon – “new shopping experience” problem, etc.
Sunrise Valley Science and Technology Park is organizing the pre-acceleration training project for youths – FUTUREPRENEURS, where young people can try to check their business ideas during 2 months trainings. Be active and take advantage of cost free opportunities for yourself and participate in mentioned project. More information, click here.
Mr. Laurynas Braškus has more than 10 years of experience in consulting youths, teams and startups of business model creation, innovation models, research and product development, financing sources and partnering with various organizations.
The lecture was organized for individuals who are interested in start-ups, creators, ideas owners, innovators, mentors, entrepreneurs and just persons who are planning to create the businesses, interested in project management and evaluation.
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