Opening presentation

Dnamo Incubator

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The Pressure Cooker has started!

One week after the selection, the Pressure Cooker kick off took place. Since that day the the entrepreneurs have been overwhelmed with trainings and workshops. During the 100 days of the Pressure Cooker, the entrepreneurs will receive 10 workshops that are all 'introductory': a first glimpse of the subject that will be given in the future. the entrepreneurs will get to know more about Business System & Organization, Team Management, Legal/IP, Fiscal, Realization & Risks, Pitching, Finance, Subsidies, Sales and Investments.

Oriol Pascual developed a crash course for the entrepreneurs. During this session the entrepreneurs will be introduced in the field of sustainability and entrepreneurship.

The entrepreneurs will also be provided with a lot of coaching. They have meetings with a sustainability coach an ISMA coach. The coaching is to help them to elaborate on their sustainable business concept and develop a strategic plan to successfully promote products to a targeted and identified market.

a picnic with Dnamo

Inspiring, high-level conference, world-class speakers, cutting-edge technology, innovative small and large group networking, unique, cool and friendly, these are the key elements for PICNIC 09. PICNIC is a unique three day festival and an inspiring conference complimented by a set of networking events and hands-on technology experiences for top creatives and innovation professionals in business, technology, new media, entertainment, science and the arts and of course Dnamo could not miss this event.

The festival will take place in Amsterdam from September 23 till September 25. The goal of the festival is to educate and connect people, industries, sectors and disciplines and stimulate creativity, innovation, inspirantion and business. PICNIC is desighned to evoke an emotional reaction through visual and auditory stimuli and surprises.

For more information about PICNIC and tickets for this event go to the website.

Dnamo @ Emerce eDay

This Thursday the 17th we will attend the Emerce eDay event at the Van Nelle Fabriek. There we will join the Incubator Exchange, where 100 representatives of promising incubators, the top of the innovative business and investment world will meet.

Emerce eDay is the yearly Dutch convention for online business and marketing dicision makers. 1500 decision makers in the field of interactive marketing, media an e-business will attend. They are responsible for driving innovation in large Dutch top 500 companies, or smaller fast growing online ventures. New strategies, cases, concepts and technology on e-business, will be delivered by national and international key note speakers.

This year Emerce eDay is celebrating its 5th anniversary. Especially for this celebration, Emerce eDay will also form the backdrop for a special edition of the Incubator Exchange. This event has already had two succesful Dutch editions before and therefor this edition, the Incubator Exchange will go international.

For more information go to the website.

Dnamo selects first round of sustainable entrepreneurs

Dnamo, the incubator for sustainable start-ups, is already rolling. Last Tuesday (Sept. 8th), six entrepreneurs were invited to present their sustainable business ideas and aim to be selected to participate in the pre-incubation program. The selection committee, composed by Dnamo's management team (Lesley Fockema, Stephan van Dijk and Oriol Pascual), was impressed by the quality and potential of the ideas and candidates. Out of six candidates, four were selected.

The selected ideas include a portable water purification system, sustainable packaging for the flower industry, an autonomous lightning system for developing regions, and propulsion system for boats that improves the efficiency by 60%. The four candidates will start next week with the pre-incubation program, where they will receive an intensive program filled with coaching on issues like finances, business planning, intellectual property, technology and sustainability. The pre-incubation program lasts 100 days and will provide the necessary support to end up writing a solid businessplan. After this process, the entrepreneurs will have the opportunity to defend their ideas again and join the 3-year incubation program.

Dnamo has developed a unique pre-incubation program where entrepreneurs have the opportunity to go from purely an idea, to a solid business plan.

Forget Rotterdam Innovation Lab! Dnamo is the name of the new incubator in Rotterdam.

Photograph by Richard Baxter (Australia)

As we told earlier Rotterdam Innovation Lab was just a working title of the incubator. There were too many other organisations with the words 'innovation' or 'lab' in their name. If you really are that innovative, you should not need to mention that in your name. Do not talk about it, BE about it.

Here a little explanation about the new name.

Dnamo generates creative energy and converts it into sustainable innovations.
Dnamo connects an co-creates to get the best result.
Dnamo is a hothouse and gives power and motivation to entrepreneurs.
Dnamo is a movement of 'movers and shakers'.

Dnamo is an incubator in Rotterdam where innovative entrepreneurs could get assistance in the development of their sustainable and innovative businesses. At the RD Campus, Dnamo is the place where the best sustainable businesses are being born!

What's in a name?

Rotterdam Innovation Lab was just a temporary working name for our project. If you google Innovation Lab, this is what you get: "Results 1-10 of approximately 2.800.000 for Innovation Lab (0,21 seconds)". So we figured we need to distinguish ourselves from all those other labs and think of a powerful name.

At this very moment we are deciding on the new name. There has already been a very productive brainstorm with Enviu, Yes!Delft, TU Delft, DC Works and Contain.r for possible names. The seven best have been chosen; SparkleCollective, Innovation Bay, Marrow, The ARC, Dnamo, Springfields and SpringVentura. Now it is up to Enviu, Yes!Delft and TU Delft to decide how the Rotterdam Innovation Lab will be called from now on.

The new name will be presented in the next blog. Stay Tuned!