Conclusions

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• Focusing on University Students: universities across the Mediterranean has the most powerful asset for the future of its economy – youth with potential for being “Job makers and providers” other than “Job seekers” and “Solutions finders” other than “Trouble makers” – as perceived by some countries. Both undergraduate and graduate students would be the primary audience for engagement to inspire entrepreneurship and get them to spend the time + energy + intellect in finding solutions to economic challenges. (Hence; focusing on engagement programs with innovation centers in universities);
• Providing “Startup Internship” Opportunities to Students: providing students with opportunities to become Interns inside innovative startups has a lot of value to both the startup and the students, Nouran’s company relied on interns for their growth and providing them with the space to innovate – the internship experience and working closely with Startup Founders usually inspire the interns to pursue their own business;
• Getting Experts to Produce Problem Statement: entrepreneurs across the Mediterranean are struggling to find the right Product-Market fit especially with poor availability of data in some countries. So much energy is wasted pursuing opportunities that’s not clearly defined – a “Pivot” is a small change to a company strategy to align its efforts with market opportunities. By getting the experts in each economic sector across the Mediterranean to produce “A Problem Statement / Opportunity Statement” then sharing this “Problem statement” with entrepreneurs, by then they can pivot their “struggling” startups into a new opportunity they might not have seen. I suggest that “The Virtual Knowledge Centre” recently launched to be used for this purpose;
• Innovation Funnel Management: given that majority of startups fail anyway and any kind of initiative targeting startups will experience a decrease in the number of engagement startups, the “Innovation Funnel” impact should be taken into consideration while engaging startups with “Finance and Support” to produce the desired solutions in the shape of the most sustainable startups. This also requires allocating the capacity to train/support/finance a large number of startups in each sector and taking into consideration that eventually a small number will become an actual solution;
• Synergy and an Open Mindset: what came out as a comment on the model of sharing in a “World Cafe” format, it was suggested that participations would have the mindset for synergy while engaging in an open discussion format and to take off their hats and share their thoughts openly, by then the struggle of getting on the same wave length, defining the objectives and providing the safe environment for everyone to speak their mind freely;
• Entrepreneurs/NGOs Speaking to Institutions: institutions need to be engaged more on how Innovative Entrepreneurs and the NGOs supporting them think and approach such problems as there is often a lack of clarity in understand how these “small” entities can have a contribution to solving bigger problems that requires big funds and big strategies.

Presentations

UFM – Blue Entrepreneurship

Salah El Sadi – UACTI Incubator, Palestine

Daniel Hires – SCP/RAC, Spain