IIP 2011

International Innovation Praktik (IIP) is a unique program for students and professionals interested in a different kind of entrepreneurship experience. The 2011 Summer Institute was specifically targeted towards PhD and Masters students attending universities in Sweden. Learn more about IIP and see what some of our 25 participants from Swedish universities experienced during their stay.

Each person selected for this one-month Summer Institute are ambassadors for how US entrepreneurship works. They were placed with a startup or growing small business in the San Francisco Bay Area, attended 2-3 networking events/week, regularly reflected on their experiences with blogs, coaching meetings, and weekly gatherings to reflect on topics including:

• Product and service design, product development and marketing in an age of social media and social commerce
• Organizational structure and business practices
• Markets, customers, and users of products and services
• Diversity of disciplines, populations, and skills that contribute to successful businesses
• Comparison of business practices, opportunities and barriers in the US

Benefits

Participants in the IIP Summer Institute:

• gain first-hand understanding of start-up businesses, the founder’s inspiration and motivations, the challenges and benefits of starting new businesses in a highly competitive environment
• learn skills related to networking with colleagues and acquaintances
• deepen their appreciation of contributions of government policies and laws, not-for-profit  organizations, and non-traditional entities in supporting business owners and businesses
• broaden their definitions of “innovation” with examples of products and services that solve mundane or simple problems, combine existing functions in imaginative ways, or fill an unnoticed gap
• gain experience in a foreign business and social setting, and become familiar with tools and techniques to use in a globally-connected, physically-distributed work world