The corona crises emerged in Denmark just after the Business Acceleration Academy was kicked off at the beginning of March. The BII team behind the three months intense program had to make a quick decision on whether to push through from a distance and keep momentum or pause the program.
“We quickly decided to push through, so we reached out to all our experts on the program and asked them to help us by adapting their workshops on IP, legal, application, competitor landscape and many other topics to a digital setup. We got a microphone and camera equipment and within a day we had set up a good quality BII studio to broadcast to the six teams in the program”, says Christian Brix Tillegreen, Senior Business Developer at BII.
More focused than ever
He points to the interesting observation that despite the distance, the teams have never worked more focused or effectively than under these new circumstances.
“The BAA program has always been quite intense for the participating teams because they work and gain insights on so many news things in a short period of time. However, in these weeks we see even more progression than we are used to simply because most of the teams do not have anything else on their plates”, says Christian Brix Tillegreen.
One of the start-up teams in the program, Luabio, is working on making businesses carbon neutral.
“The journey with Luabio is very intense and high paced despite the situation. The first weeks with the corona lockdown have been challenging, but the BII team’s effort to change the format to better suit the virtual space has kept the intensity and quality high”, says Torbjørn Ølshøj Jensen, CEO of Luabio.
External meetings postponed
All teams gather several times a week in the virtual classroom and watch the broadcast of the different workshops, and the individual meeting between the teams, experts and BII are also following the regular schedule but in new, digital ways. Christian Brix Tillegreen and the team are pushing all external meetings with large pharma companies and other potential partners for the teams to later in the program with the hope and expectation that things will change towards the end of the program.
For now, the only thing missing is the social gatherings and daily interactions at the office.
“We are so glad that the teams and experts met each other at the boot camp and had the chance to speak in person before the situation changed. It certainly makes things easier, and we are also brainstorming on how to bring the teams closer together virtually. A Monday breakfast or Friday bar behind the screens might be coming up.”
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