The document discusses entrepreneurship and the challenges of transforming startups from initial concept to sustainable business. Key points include the importance of management skills for startup success and the necessity of adopting a structured approach to growth. It emphasizes that startups should operate with an innovative mindset while maintaining efficient business practices.

1. Global Leadership Conference
Association of MBAs
Audencia Nantes, France
6-9 February 2014

2. Create!
From concept/idea to product and from
product to business
Dimitris Tsigos
www.linkedin.com/in/tsigos
President, YES – European Confederation of Young Entrepreneurs
www.yes.be

3. Questions & Decisions
• Why
• What
• How

4. Why?
• Maximize income, wealth
• Catch the wave (ride the bubble?)
• Create an organization larger than &
independent from you
• A way of living

5. Entrepreneurships Vs
Business

6. Sustainability Vs Domination
From pyramids to pancakes
© Josephine Green
http://futures.research.southwales.ac.uk/people/josephine/

7. What?
• “I want to startup, I just don’t know what to
do”
• It doesn’t really matter!
• Prerequisite is simply to like it

8. Must-have Vs Nice-to-have

9. Creative copying 
“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what
they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least
something different.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood

10. How?
• Here’s where the great misunderstanding
is
• The “garage s/w” model does not really
work
• Thin & lean is the way to go
• Management should be in the startup’s

11. Reasons to fail
• Most of the failed startups lacked
management skills and capacity
• Founders should never underestimate the
necessity for management skills &
processes
• Founders often hesitate to add
management skills to the team

12. The management leap
• Many startups fail to make the leap from
1M to 5M in revenues
• Failure to introduce management structure
• The most difficult change a company has
to manage in its early years

13. A startup is …
• …an innovative, creating, dynamic,
aiming-to-grow…
• …BUSINESS!
• It then should be always run as a proper
business
• Tools, techniques, methodologies
• As lean as possible, but not more.

14. Thank you 