We are proud to inaugurate this year’s Aspire blog with a special message from Alain Heureux – a dear professor from Aspire.
Alain is a serial entrepreneur, starting his first company in 1984 and still creating companies at the current age of 56. In 2010, he opened one of the first Incubators in Brussels hosting more than 60 start-ups from creative industries, as well as hosting events for corporations and institutions. Today, Alain Heureux is the CEO of Virtuology Academy Brussels-Paris and co-Founder of Intego Academy Kigali but also Professor in several Universities and Business Schools, adding Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship within their curriculum of MBA programs.
Below you can read Alain’s thoughts on the last Aspire Academy cohort of 2022.
‘Every year, hundreds of young talented people from all over Europe gather in Poiana Brasov, as well as professors from all over the World. The goal is to challenge their brilliant minds on different domains.
My contribution since 2015 is to let them create in 48 hours some prototypes for start-ups. They start from a core idea that they implement with the help of tools and methods, like:
Business Model Canvas, Design Thinking, Pimento Map, MVP, POC, etc.
During this process, they understand how to develop a business hypothesis – learning by doing remains my teaching philosophy! I let them play with new hard skills and provoke them towards developing specific soft skills (empathy, leadership, assertiveness, dealing with failure, etc).
I’m always impressed by the purpose and ideas chosen by the youth, because they show what matters to them: social entrepreneurship is definitely part of their DNA. We had teams working on the principles of democracy, on the lack of human connections, on the discovery of European culture or on energy and circular economy for the agricultural sector.
Although the main objective is to participate, we ask the participants to elect a winning team for this Startup Sprint. This year, I am happy to congratulate such a well-balanced and talented team: from left to right Silvian Ene, Roxana Talamba, Ilinca Suciu, Maria Bozga, Jorge Servert and Mile Krstev.’
Keep an eye on our blog so you will get monthly inspiration from our speakers and alumni members!
