This half day Masterclass was organized in the framework of the G-BIB competition and took place on Thursday 09th May 2019 at the Catholic University Leuven, Campus Arenberg, 3000 Leuven, Belgium.
This training is the second one being organised in the framework of the G-BIB competition, the first one being a training on business plan writing.
Besides writing the business plan, the participants to the competition also have to present their business plan in front of a skilled jury consisting of investors and business managers. This masterclass was also open to external participants, not participating in the G-BIB competition, but interested in acquiring these skills as well.
The masterclass was provided by Geert De Wael of The Forge, a spin-off from Ghent University, helping other teams and organisations to analyse how innovative they are and what they can do to improve it. Geert is experienced in coaching of public speakers.
For the training to be efficient, the participants were asked to prepare a pitch presentation for their business plan in written form. The first part of the training was used to explain the importance of good story telling. Then the participants were invited to present their prepared pitch, after which different elements of their pitches were taken out and commented as an introduction to the next part. In this part an overview was given of possible scientifically underpinned charisma techniques that can be used to improve the presentation. The participants were then asked to rewrite their pitch presentation, using at least 5 charisma techniques. The new presentations of these adapted pitches clearly proved that they were more appealing and attractive, making the participants more confident when having to present before a skilled jury during the semi-finals and finals of the G-BIB competition.
The pitch training was attended by 18 participants, including the 3 Belgian/Flemish teams for the G-BIB competition and 1 external participant.
Background Information to G-BiB
The G-BIB competition - Global Biobased Businessplan Competition - is a competition for Master and PhD students in Germany and Belgium. The objective of G-BiB is to stimulate entrepreneurship and innovation by challenging students active in the field of biobased production. The aim of the competition is to write an innovative business plan for the sustainable production of bio-renewable products such as biochemicals, biofuels or biomaterials, or partial solutions that will support developing those products.
