The Chinese new year has just started, and this is the year of the Dragon. As I am born in 1976, I am a fire dragon and this year is supposed to be a very prosperous and lucky year for me. So what better year to take on a new challenge and become an entrepreneur?
After 6 great years at TNO, I have started my own company ELM Concepts. ELM – short for E-Learning & Media – helps organizations innovate their media and education propositions. We do this by conducting research, concepting new propositions and by developing and giving educational courses and workshops. I must say that this is really an adventure for me, and love the thrill of spotting new business opportunities and creating new products and services. Currently I am working for Rabobank on an educational Facebook game. The goal of the game is to teach young people in the Netherlands the value of cooperative entrepreneurship within the context of the world food problem. The game plays into the UN’s decision to name 2012 the international year of the cooperatives. To practice what we preach, we are co-creating this game every step of the way with groups of students throughout the Netherlands in both offline MindSessions and on our Facebook platform.
Furthermore, we also just launched our iPad based co-creation & education tool MindSessions. We worked long and hard on developing this tool, and are very proud of the outcome. MindSessions are social iPad-based workshops, where participants work together to create new insights and solutions. For this, we have created a game flow in which we use several didactical principles to increase both motivation and learning results. Have a look at the MindSessions website (in Dutch for now) and tell us what you think.