The day started of at Stanford Campus a bit earlier than other days. We jumped on the tour bus with our Faculty Fellowship.
Our first stop where at the Innovation node called Rainforest. It is the outreach function of T2 Venture Creation. They use the metaphor of rainforest to visualize innovation culture and framwork as the chaos of weed growth, rainforest vs. plantation i.e. established industry.
They mainly deal with state and government officials who need to get a better understanding of innovative climate and (the importance of lacking of)structural support to enhance disruptive idea generating mindsets, venture capital formation, entrepreneurship development, support programs, and innovation policy.
T2 Venture Creation is (in their opinion) the world leader in the design and implementation of innovation ecosystems that are regionally relevant, culturally sensitive, and highly sustainable. They levarage networks, grow startup companies, manage capital, and build innovation ecosystems around the world. They invest capital and time in technology startups with the greatest promise and help them succeed. Their global network comes from our unique expertise at the intersection of private venture and public policy.
We got a introduced to a reshaped version of Osterwalders Business model canvas called the Rainforest canvas.
The visit was very interesting and we couldn’t quite get ourselves to scurry back in to the bus in time. A bit delayed we got to our second visit: StartX. StartX is a non-profit organization whose mission is to accelerate the development of Stanford’s top entrepreneurs in all fields through experiential education. It reminds of an incubator/accelerator but with the twist of not taking any equity, being completely free and the fact that all admitted entrepreneurs have access to a number of different highly experienced mentors in a range of professions. The visit was super interesting and we got inspired to implement a similar thing in Malmö.
After StartX we where a bit behind schedule and decided to take early lunch in Palo Alto instead of San Fransisco and went to lunch at the Fisherman’s Wharf.
The trip up to San Fransisco went along the beautiful 280 and the landscape is truly amazing with the lenticular clouds along the mountain ridge to the west. The traffic was not on our favour and we got to our third visit, After College, about 20 minutes late.
AfterCollege is the largest career network for college students and recent graduates. They are working to eliminate unemployment among college students and recent grads by helping students explore jobs and internships based on answers to 3 easy questions: what did you study, where, and when do you graduate. See more.
It’s an alternative to Future Finder that we have at Mah and Jeanette got as excited at this place as I (Joa) got at StartX. Due to the fact that we where a little late we sadly had to abort the finalizing round of Q&A in order to get to our final visit – NovoEd.
NovoEd is a social online learning environment. NovoEd partners with education institutions and corporations to offer a platform for collaborative, experiential online courses, with emphasise on collaborative. Some courses have over 100.000 participants from all over the world.
To sum it up, the day was amazing. All impressions from the visits as well as the reviews and discussions in the bus with other teams lefts us pretty beat when we finally arrived at the house in Mountain View late at night.