New business ideas pitched to Limburg agri-food professionals

Students of the HAS University of Applied Sciences can choose the minor Entrepreneurship & Innovation during their studies. Within this minor they learn, among other things, how to pitch a new business idea, for example by practicing with Limburg agri-food professionals. Recently, entrepreneurs and students came together in the parking lot of Brightlands Campus Greenport Venlo and in a real Dragons' Den to talk about innovative concepts for the agri-food sector.

Drafting a business plan

In the minor that took place last fall, thirty students worked on their own business plan for ten weeks. Teacher Esther Vennekens explains: "At the beginning of the minor, the students each come up with three ideas that they do want to put on the market. They can also contact a company to work out an issue for them focused on new business. In the following weeks they will explore these ideas and issues further. Based on that, they will choose one for which they will work out a complete business concept based on the business canvas model."

Show moments

"There are two important show moments," Esther continues. "The first is the elevator pitch. Normally we hold it in the Innovatoren in Venlo. We literally step into the elevator with a student and in the 39 seconds it takes the elevator to go to the highest floor the student pitches his or her business idea. Now this was not possible because of the corona rules, so we took a slightly different approach. We did a parking pitch: the student walked from the parking lot to Villa Flora that is next to the Innovators and pitched his or her idea to a 'passerby'."

Dragons' Den

"The second show moment is the Dragons' Den. We held this for the first time this year. During this meeting, the students were allowed to present their plans to a panel of seven entrepreneurs: Corine Fleuren (Fleuren Boomkwekerij), Jos Tholen (Agrifirm), Jeroen Rondeel (Blue engineering), Merijn Luijkx (Rabobank), André Boudewijns (ABC Tractors), Marcel Verdellen (Satori Holland) and Funs Ebus (Ebus Planten). In 10 minutes they could discover how their idea fell into the field and receive valuable feedback. Both students and professionals were at the end of the day an experience richer and went home inspired."

Wash protection

One of the participating students was Youri Timmermans, a business administration and agrifood business student. He tells about his experience: "For a long time I had an idea related to crop protection in my head that contributes to improving food safety, reducing emission forms when performing crop protection and that contributes to circular agriculture. Within the minor, I had the opportunity to work with this idea for the first time. I really loved it, I learned a lot and discovered what my unique selling points are and on whom my idea can have an impact."

More information can be found on the website of the HAS University of Applied Sciences.