Following the success of the Entrepreneurship Summer School series, ThinkYoung and the European Institute for Industrial Leadership (EIIL), in association with Google, launched the Entrepreneurship Winter School in January 2013. The week-long workshop, again held at the attractive venue of Science 14 Atrium in Brussels, used the EIIL’s Masterclass Methodology, coached by Steve Price of the EIIL, to help 36 participants of 22 different nationalities, of which the average age was 22, to learn, and ‘learn to learn’, from the experiences of successful entrepreneurs and business leaders.

I have not had much experience with inductive methods of learning in the past and my time spent at the EIIL on this workshop is my first sustained exposure to this. As I made my notes throughout the workshop, I was thinking about the two days from the perspective of a Learning and Development professional who would consider sending colleagues and staff to attend such a workshop. In particular about the value of the workshop once participants had returned to their workplace at the end of the experience. Would I recommend this to others?  Yes I would.

Are we connected? The first of its kind ‘connected generation’ conference saw 82 Participants congregate at the EIIL’s Chateau Latour des Freins in Brussels. Four key ‘impulse’  presentations  by Denis Hicks, David Jammes (P&G), Heather Moore (Vodafone) and Kurt de Ruwe (former CIO at BMS) were each followed by four break-out sessions where facilitated group  discussions on each impulse theme generated considerable output, highlights of which were summarised in presentations back to the plenary session.

Participants were further given the opportunity to reflect upon their learning objectives and gain first-hand experience through interviews with senior professionals from European Confederations (Digital Europe, EIGA), Industrial groups (RWE, Toyota) and Member of European Parliament Herbert Reul, Chairman of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy. 

A new challenge was recently laid down by Dr.Tony Van Osselaer, [Member of the Executive Committee and of the Board of Management of Bayer MaterialScience AG] for the EIIL to look into whether it is able to help with BMS's induction of high-potential non-technical professionals into the process industry with some sort of programme to help them appreciate the basic processes and technologies fundamental to their business. We already have some excellent internal programmes run by some of our technology experts, but we're interested in whether the EIIL's learning style and approach can help us to enhance these' said Dr Van Osselaer.

'The EIIL has so far addressed registration enquiries from other functions by explaining that our workshops, whilst aimed at technical professionals, have nothing by way ofcontent which would preclude any non-technical colleagues from participating'said EIIL director Steve Price, responsible for the current workshop programme. 

EIIL Founding Director Michael Abbott will be giving the opening address to over 500 engineers and other (primarily Chinese) decision-makers at the upcoming Hydroinformatics Conference in a beautiful new satellite city (now with some1.4 million habitants) some 40 kilometers from Tianjin, which is the principal port of the Beijing region. The Minister of Water Resources of PR China is expected to open the Conference and some of his staff are also expected to attend the opening ceremony: the very high speed train covers the 140 kilometers between Beijing and Tianjin in less than 30 minutes and then it is another 20 minutes to the satellite city. (When held in the UK the conference was opened by HRH The Princess Royal, Princess Anne, and when in France under the protection of Jacques Chirac, the then President of France,) This is thus a key meeting which its organisers expect to shape the way in which water is protected and employed throughout China and thencein many other places around the world, of which the most significant are in Africa in its increasingly significant position as La Chineafrique. China's water sector constitutes an industry which will be worth many trillions of euros over the next couple of decades.