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We're Back

posted May 22, 2016, 11:18 PM by Unknown user

The MBS EnC has been reformed and is looking forward to actively participating in the local entrepreneurship community.

Putting the 'Face to Face' back into social interaction

posted Sep 26, 2012, 1:32 PM by Unknown user   [ updated Sep 26, 2012, 1:35 PM ]

By Wai Kwen Chan
September 12, 2012 11:07 am

A look of disbelief and elation spread across the faces of four MBA students from Mannheim Business School, Germany, when it was announced they were the winners of the 20th European Business Plan of the Year competition.

The four, Alistair Bruce, Moritz Hertler, Stefan Reuter and Christian Uhrich, donned matching shirts sporting the company logo “Spotted” as they posed for photographs at London Business School, this year’s host.

Their business plan – a mobile app that aims to put the face-to-face interaction back into social networking – earned them the top prize of €3,000. They intend to invest the prize money in their start-up. Spotted aims to help people with similar interests in a specific geographical area to network more effectively and set up meetings – at a graduate recruitment fair or a party, for example.

Users of the app can create online profiles of themselves, by extracting information from social media sites such as LinkedIn. After viewing profiles of other Spotted users in the nearby vicinity, users can then target selected people of interest via a messaging feature and suggest a meeting.

“Spotted is basically aimed at reducing the element of chance that is inherent in professional networking,” says Mr Reuter.

Mr Bruce came up with the idea for the app at the beginning of his MBA. During a class discussion about MP3 players he realised that people use their mobile devices at the expense of face-to-face interaction. He wondered about a tool that could help people connect with others around them and saw the potential of a smartphone in helping people to meet each other.

“Since the smartphone now performs many functions, it was a natural place to start, creating a mobile application that could help break the ice between strangers and leverage the information that is contained within our online social networks,” says Mr Bruce.

At the school’s entrepreneurship club, he pitched the idea to others: “Over the next week we formed teams around the ideas we felt strongest about, this is the point when the four of us came together.”

Mr Uhrich says that the club has brought the four members of Spotted in contact with many successful entrepreneurs who “shared their experiences, positive and negative, with us and have been a great support.”

The annual European Business Plan competition is designed to encourage entrepreneurship teaching, the development of new ventures and to enable students to gain experience of raising capital. The competition is an independent foundation that is jointly governed by all its participating schools.

This year 15 business schools from 10 countries took part. Participants must submit a detailed business plan containing the rationale behind their venture, plus their marketing and financial strategies. Participants pitch their ideas to competitors and a panel of judges, The best six teams are then selected to present their business plans a second time and answer questions from the jury.

The Spotted team incorporated feedback from the judges to deliver a more focused pitch on the final day.

“We believe this flexibility, openness to criticism and speed in delivering quality results under the immense time pressure demonstrated many of our core team strengths and may have been a big factor in our success,” explains Mr Bruce.

The team are now working with a German company to develop the design and the hosting for the prototype, with the intention of demonstrating a prototype to a business angels conference later this month in Mannheim.

Mr Bruce says that business angel investment is one of a few options being pursued for financing of the project post MBA.

“We also have options with some government sponsorship opportunities... but we are looking in quite some detail at the trade off between maintaining complete ownership and gaining external financing and which of the two options will put the company in the best shape in the future.”

The team is also keeping an eye open for the right external partnerships, he adds.

A former venture capitalist and chair of applied business science and business informatics faculty at Mannheim, Armin Heinzl, is supervising the team’s application for a grant from the German government.

The €94,000 grant is specifically for start-ups to help them develop their business plan into a venture that will generate revenue within the first year of operation. If the grant application is successful Prof Heinzl, who has considerable experience in the field of technology start-ups, will become the team’s project supervisor.

The four founders of Spotted have already handed in their thesis which is based on their business plan. They are referencing Eric Ries’ book The Lean Startup as a handbook to help them reduce waste in the development process; the book suggests producing a device with a minimum of features so that changes and additional features can then be added based on customer feedback.

After graduation this month the team is also planning to work with Mannheim Business School to help promote and foster entrepreneurship within the school.

Over the coming year 'Financial Times' will follow the fortunes of the Spotted team as the four founders make funding decisions, decide on their business strategy and bring their product to market.

Source: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/10aa18ec-f12f-11e1-a553-00144feabdc0.html#axzz27bpuns7r

MBS Wins European Business Plan Competition of the Year

posted Sep 26, 2012, 1:25 PM by Unknown user


Four students from the Mannheim Business School (MBS) have already achieved what is the main goal of elite football teams at the moment: they are the best in Europe. Alistair Bruce, Moritz Hertler, Stefan Reuter and Christian Uhrich, who are still studying on the one-year full-time MBA program until September, triumphed at the "European Business Plan of the Year" at the London Business School with their "SPOTTED" application concept based on social media platforms, which connects people with others in their direct vicinity who share  the same interests. The competition annually awards the best business plan for an entrepreneurial idea and was being held for the 20th time. In the final of this competition, Mannheim MBA students beat 14 teams from renowned business schools from ten nations, including Great Britain, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Sweden.

"Even the invitation to the finals was a huge success for us. We were of course convinced by our concept, but none of us expected to be able to win against such top-class competition", says team member Stefan Reuter. MBS President Professor Dr. Jens Wüstemann congratulates the winning quartet, "this is further proof of the exceptional quality of our students and shows that Mannheim Business School stands for management education at the highest international level, which demands and promotes teamwork as well as entrepreneurship". For MBS, this is already the second success for its students and alumni at an important international competition within a year. Three MBS graduates were already awarded with the worldwide "Entrepreneurial Venture Award" by the renowned Association of MBAs (AMBA) in October 2011 for their enterprise concept developed as part of the ESSEC & MANNHEIM Executive MBA that was then successfully implemented later on.

On their path to winning the joint victory with prize money of 3,000 EUR, the Mannheim MBA students had to face several challenges: the submission of a 40-page business plan was required in the first stage, which documented, for example, the marketing strategy, financing and technical implementation of the idea. During the three-day finals in London several presentations and discussion rounds in front of competitors and panels of experts were then on the agenda. The final decision was made after a presentation to a jury consisting of six professional investors.

Now, the Mannheim MBA students want to also realize their concept. "The basic idea of SPOTTED is to compare the online profiles of people who live close to each other and send a message to their mobile end device if they share the same interests. As a result, interesting personal networks may emerge or be developed in a very simple way", explains Stefan Reuter. In the first stage, the team wants to focus on students. "It is, for example, conceivable that SPOTTED will bring graduates who are interested in starting their career in a particular industry together with relevant companies at a Career Fair", says Reuter.

EnC Event: "How to Write a Business Plan"

posted Feb 8, 2012, 9:24 AM by Unknown user

The MBS Entrepreneurship Club is pleased to announce that next March 22nd at 7:00 PM in the ECD Building (2nd Floor), we will be hosting a workshop titled "How to Write a Business Plan" imparted by Mr. Michael Altendorf, CEO and Co-Owner of the German Firm Adtelligence. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to learn all about drafting a business plan directly from a very successful and experienced entrepreneur.

If you have any further questions, don't hesitate to email us at EnC@mannheim-business-school.c
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MBS to Participate in the 20th European Business Plan of the Year Competition

posted Feb 5, 2012, 8:36 AM by Unknown user   [ updated Feb 8, 2012, 9:25 AM ]

The Entrepreneurship Club of Mannheim Business School has successfully negotiated participation for one of our school's teams into the 20th European Business Plan of the Year Competition (EBPYC) to be hosted at London Business School on June 2012. The EBPYC was jointly developed by INSEAD and London Business School to encourage the teaching of entrepreneurship and the creation of new ventures and it is now a jointly governed foundation by all its participating schools and Europe's longest continuing competition.

The EnC has already begun the coordination of an internal competition at MBS, which will see several five member teams going on a head-to-head battle to win a spot on the EBPYC in London. The teams will be composed of students from the Full-Time MBA (MAMBA) and Executive MBA (EMBA) programs and the winning team will be selected by an expert panel consisting of MBS' Dean Dr. Prof. Jens Wüstemann and Dr. Carsten Linz from SAP.

EnC Event: "Do you have what it takes to be an Entrepreneur?"

posted Nov 20, 2011, 4:05 PM by Unknown user   [ updated Feb 8, 2012, 9:28 AM ]

Next December 15th from 7:00 - 9:00PM at Mannheim Business School's lecture hall at Schloss Mannheim, Mrs. Ingrid Salamon, will share some of her thoughts, experiences and views with regards to what it takes to be an Entrepreneur. Mrs. Salamon is an alumna of the ESSEC MANNHEIM EMBA programme and Founder and General Manager of Tour du Vin GmbH, a unique portal for wine personalities in Germany.

Additional to the lecture, the EnC will host a free wine tasting event sponsored by Tour du Vin GmbH.

Don't miss out on this amazing opportunity!

Mannheim Executive MBA Graduates Receive International Entrepreneurial Venture Award

posted Nov 11, 2011, 7:31 AM by Unknown user   [ updated Nov 11, 2011, 7:31 AM ]

Based on their “Entrepreneurial Project”, which is an integral part of the ESSEC & MANNHEIM Executive MBA and requires students to develop a real life business case, MBS alumni Erol Bozak, Wolfgang Kalthoff and Jörg Wiemer founded their own company shortly upon graduation in 2009. Treasury Intelligence Solutions (TIS), as they called the company, offers innovative and easy to use risk and compliance solutions in the areas of bank account and cash management. Since its inception, the company has gone from strength to strength: Earlier this year the TIS executive team announced a € 2.5 million investment into the company by Munich-based venture capital firm Target Partners as well as a cooperative sales partnership with Deutsche Bank AG.

In recognition of their achievements, the three Mannheim entrepreneurs were the first to receive the international Entrepreneurial Venture Award, launched this year by the Association of MBAs (AMBA), one of the three leading international associations for accredited business schools. The winners were announced at the annual Gala dinner of the association, which was held at prestigious Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington, London, on October 19, 2011.

The aim of TIS is to provide secure and efficient payment solutions for businesses. “All business-critical processes related to payment transactions, cash balances, payment statuses and bank account responsibilities are managed in a single, audit-proof application”, explains Wiemer who holds the position of CEO at TIS. “The solution is sold in the Software as a Service (SaaS) model and is easy to implement - without the need for costly, resource-intensive project planning, thereby delivering quick time to value for customers.”

The Entrepreneurial Project is a key element of the ESSEC & MANNHEIM Executive MBA program and designed to promote innovation and an entrepreneurial mindset. Students are challenged to transform their ideas into concrete business plans and to apply the cross-disciplinary knowledge they acquire in the course of their program. “Through the Entrepreneurial Project, students give proof positive that they not only understand business imperatives, but are able to act upon them as well”, says Professor Dr. Jens Wüstemann, President of Mannheim Business School. Thus it should come as no surprise that a significant number of graduates found their own company upon graduation – and do so rather successfully, as the example of TIS shows.

EnC goes Social!

posted Nov 11, 2011, 12:02 AM by Unknown user   [ updated Nov 11, 2011, 12:35 AM ]

The Entrepreneurship Club of Mannheim Business Social has diversified its presence into the World Wide Web by venturing into some of the most popular social networks. As part of the new leadership's plan of improving their reach and communication with members, the Club has developed Facebook, Twitter and XING profiles pages as well as a YouTube Channel. These tools will be very important for our Club in order to attract new speakers, members and motivate people around the World to venture into Entrepreneurship. Make sure you stop by at any of our profile pages and say hello!

New 2011/2012 Leadership

posted Nov 10, 2011, 10:24 AM by Unknown user   [ updated Nov 14, 2011, 1:33 PM ]

The Active Support Members of the Entrepreneurship Club, Pablo Galvez and Uwe Zell, have recently elected the new batch of leaders that will have the responsibility of continuing with the legacy of the MBS Entrepreneurship Club. Stefan Reuter, a former General Electric employee from Köln, was elected as the club's President. He will have the challenging task of leading a very diverse team composed of Olesya Torop from the Ukraine  (Director of Learning), Shree Kothari from the United States (Director of Events), Francisco Loehnert from Chile (Director of Networking) and Alvaro Lachner from Costa Rica (Director of IT & Organizational Structure).

Their main goal is to develop the Club's organizational structure, politics and IT infrastructure in order to secure funding for the Club from Mannheim Business School. In the past the club has been funded only by the members' private initiatives and the generosity of its past speakers. Therefore,  securing funds from the Program Management would allow the Club to improve the quality of its services and events.

We wish the best of luck to the new EnC Governance!

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