From the 12th to the 16th of November 2018 a delegation from the Technological University of Tajikistan visited the Technical Institute of Lisboa in the frame of the MIND training in entrepreneurship for outstanding Central Asian students.

Below is a detailed report of the agenda and results obtained in the training:

MONDAY, 12TH NOVEMBER 2018

The training started as planned and timely with everyone being present. After a warm welcome and brief presentation of everyone in the class, the training started with an ice-breaker game, followed by the students’ projects presentation. In the second part of the morning, the theoretical part of the training began with the presentation of the Business Model concept, based on the value proposition exercise.

 

09:30 – 10:00 Ice-breaker game “Two things one lie”: aimed to get to know each other and to understand how experiences influence people and how they are important.

10:00 – 10:20 Students Projects Presentations: each student presented his Project and the reasons why they are attending the training.

• Umed: wants to develop an HR/Recruiting company, to companies/employers who need employees with specific characteristics.
• Mahmadali: wants to develop an on-line company to deliver medicines among all Dushanbe elderly people.
• Bodom: wants to organize on-line courses in Tajik language for the high school students. The aim is to prepare them for the University level, by taking this courses.
• The courses will be paid by the students/users.
• Surush: the idea is to develop a service to support companies that are in the incubator phase. The service will be paid by the students.

During the Students presentations the following concepts were presented to them:

• Elevator Pitch: the importance of being clear and concise when presenting a business idea to a potential investor.
• Business Model: initiation to the business model concept, the process of elevating an idea to a business opportunity.
  After the students’ presentations, feedback was given to all of them, in general they need to work in their presentations skills.

11:00 – 12:00 The value Proposition Canvas Exercise:
Define the Customer Segment: identify the customer profile, the gains, pains and customer job(s) [what does the customer job implies; what are his difficulties]. Each student must think exactly who their customer is.

All examples and explanations are given within each student business idea.

 

14:00 – 15:00 IST Presentation: the institutional presentation of Instituto Superior Técnico was made and time was made available to answer to different type of questions regarding the hosting Institution.

15:00 – 16:00 IST Campus Tour: the first ended with a campus tour.

TUESDAY, 13TH NOVEMBER 2018

During the second day of training the “Value Proposition Canvas” exercise was developed. The main goal of this exercise is for the students to put themselves on the customer shoes and theoretically define, or hypothesize, about what is the Customer Job, what are the Customer Pains, for each of the potential consumers of their company.

Afterwards the students worked on the value of the proposition, identifying the Products and Services of the company, what is going to be offered to the costumers.

This was an individual work, made by each students’/business idea, but with the contributions/feedback of the all group – with this process the aim was to generate new ideas, alternative ways of structuring the business or find more fit solutions.

Constant feedback was provided to all students, this exercise occured during the morning and the afternoon.

 

WEDNESDAY, 14TH NOVEMBER 2018

In the morning of the third day of training the students prepared the exercise that took place in the afternoon, the “Validation Process”. The aim of this exercise is for the students to inquiry people on the street or on campus about their business idea. This exercise works as a small market study, where the students directly inquiry potential customers and collect their impressions about their business.

Although being a very conceptual work, the preparation phase, the “on field” experience is intended to make the students leave their “comfort zone” and be more active on explaining their business proposal, but also on learning how to hear the customer: what he has to say about the product as it is? What does the customer think that is important to be offered? What does the customer need that the idea developer hasn’t yet consider?

Afterwards the collected information must be subjected to a process of serious reflection. All the valid input must be considered and if possible integrated in the business model and all the valid inputs that cannot be yet implemented must be recorded and planned to be posteriorly assessed for future development.

 

THRUSDAY, 15TH NOVEMBER 2018

In the morning the students visited the company Landing Jobs that was developed by IST alumni, while they were studying at IST. The main goal of this visit is to show to the students how an idea that began during the alumni period as a student become a start-up company.

The visit began with a tour through company office, accompanied by a description of the company life time story. Afterwards, a moment of question and answers took place, in which the students asked several questions that were happily answered by the company owners.

In the afternoon a closure and wrap-up exercise was conducted – after the theoretical introduction on Monday, the business model development on Tuesday, the business model validation on Wednesday, the students were asked to reflect about how their business idea was and how has it changed after this exercise. What have they learned and what were the most important contributions of this training to their business.

FRIDAY, 16TH NOVEMBER 2018

On Friday the students had the opportunity to take a cultural approach to the Portuguese way of living. Experience and discovering a new culture is always an interesting trait that an entrepreneur can have and explore.