After attending Boston University School of Management’s Norwegian Entrepreneurship Program at the Executive Leadership Center, the founders of the Norwegian startup Cergis have been awarded both the $65,000 Venture Cup, a top prize in a major Scandinavian business plan competition, and a $17,500 innovation prize by the trade union of Norwegian graduate engineers.
The Boston University Norwegian Entrepreneurship Program, supported heavily by the Norwegian government in an effort to enhance innovation in the country, brings together outstanding graduate students from across Norway to participate in this rigorous program focusing on entrepreneurship. After doing coursework at the University of Oslo’s School of Entrepreneurship -- or Gründerskolen -- participants complete a 12-week overseas academic and internship component at Boston University School of Management.
The Cergis team, consisting of Erik Thorsland Austbo, Jorgen Mathisen, and Erik Svensrud, came to the Boston University Norwegian Entrepreneurship Program last summer with a business idea based on technology that helps protect industrial pumps from being damaged by bubbles arising during certain types of flow.
The Program’s “Entrepreneurship Research” course helped them focus their idea into a polished business plan. The course is designed to help entrepreneurs:
- Recognize and define their business opportunity from the perspectives of the market, the producer, and the investor;
- Describe how that opportunity will be seized by the management team;
- Provide a clear definition of the venture concept, milestones for progress, and criteria for strategic decision-making
- Identify and attract all of the necessary resources to execute the plan.
The Venture Cup was started by McKinsey & Company in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1998, to promote entrepreneurship within Scandinavian universities and to generate high-growth start-up companies. It is run today, through a series of nonprofit entities, in Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Sweden.
The competition consists of several stages, in which participating teams submit their ideas or projects for consideration of a professional jury. At each stage, prizes are awarded, and more than half a million Euros are given away as prizes across Scandinavia every year.
Congratulations to team Cergis!
