One year ago MIETE and JUNIFEUP, the Junior Enterprise at the Faculty of Engineering of University of Porto, joined together in a real interesting endeavour. The agreement between MIETE and JuniFEUP allowed members of JuniFEUP to join MIETE Technology Commercialisation Trainning from September 2006 to February 2008.
MIETE-BLOG: Manuel Parente, you are JuniFEUP CEO since November. We all know that JuniFEUP role and work is much praised in FEUP and I thank you for your availability to be here with us. Can you please make a brief presentation of JuniFEUP, the Junior Enterprise at the engineering Faculty of Porto?
MP: JuniFEUP, Júnior Empresa da Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto, was created on March 2001 and is entirely run, but for the president that is appointed by the facultie’s board, by undergraduate students of all years and degrees from FEUP, Porto University’s Faculty of Engineering, and has currently about 130 members and collaborators, being able to reach out, whenever is needed, to the over 6.000 students from the whole faculty.
JuniFEUP was born so that it could be the bridge between the academic and the enterprise worlds, allowing the students to apply, on the field, the theoretic knowledge acquired in the classrooms.
As a Junior Enterprise, JuniFEUP is legally recognized as a Non-Profit Organization and its members, besides the management of the enterprise, develop projects in several areas of Engineering, like IT, chemical, mining and industrial management. The fact that JuniFEUP belongs to Porto University, the biggest in Portugal with over 28.000 students in 14 faculties, allows it to have a big visibility and credit with the companies from several engineering and technology areas.
This Junior Enterprise has worked with well knowned enterprises from several fields such as Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Porto Editora, Areal Editores, IRICUP, AIORN, Altran, Metro Quadrado, Egitron, EGP, Lipor, EuroCoast, etc.
JuniFEUP has organized several events, from which we highlight the “Notable Conversations” (a series of lectures with several important personalities of science and business), the conference “Technological Consulting: a future for engineers?” (in a partnership with Altran) and the First Portugal Junior Enterprise’s Congress (I CJEP) about entrepreneurship, whose objective was to present the National Federation and promote the concept of Junior Enterprise in the country.
MIETE-BLOG: What was the main motivation that led JuniFEUP to accept MIETE invitation to have some of your members joining our course?
MP: As the challenge that was put upon us, the first reaction was of joy because now we are able to show the values learnt in JuniFEUP in a more challenging environment and also the fact that we would be working directly with FEUP at an academic level. As we assessed a more efective way of making this synergy between JuniFEUP and MIETE we began to notice that the entrepreneurial values in both these entities we very similar.The entrepreneurial culture, the belief in ourselves, recognising possibilities and seizing opportunities were also values present in MIETE.
Values like personal development (improving strengths and working on weaknesses), the proactive involvement (Engaging in change and standing up for our beliefs), the committed professionalism (ensuring quality and dedication to results), the social responsability and of course the open mindedness (developing innovative solutions and utilising creativity) were similar factors that led us to a sucessful project between JuniFEUP and MIETE.
MIETE-BLOG: Manuel Parente, thank you again for your most valuable time. We now interview Tiago Nunes, Filipe Alonso , Felipe Costa and Luis Maia, JuniFEUP members that acutally joined MIETE TEC Sequence last October.
Tiago, Filipe, Felipe and Luis (from left), thank you also for taking the time to have this interview for our BLOG. You are an undergraduate student at the 4th Year of Informatics Engineering at FEUP. What did you have in mind when you submitted your name to join the Technology Commercialisation Trainning in MIETE? What was your main motivation?
TN: I felt that some know-how on Technology Commercialisation was a very good addition to my set of skills. I used to focus my efforts on more technical aspects and overlook the whole management/market/business scene, which somehow limited my development as a (soon-to-be) engineer. The Technology Comercialisation Sequence in MIETE looked like a great opportunity.
FA: First of all it presents me a big opportunity for my academic training and career, since my future walks toward technological innovation businesses. It’s a big chance to learn and experience the promotion of new business projects. It’s certainly an important tool for starting an enterprise activity with technological basis.
FC: First of all, I’d like to thank MIETE for the invitation for this interview and especially for all the devotion towards JuniFEUP’s members. By the time I submitted my application I was the Production and Comercial Director for JuniFEUP, and this phase of my (still young) career allowed me to get contact with the comercial area, especially marketing and sales. MIETE thus looked like a great opportunity to learn more about this subject. Having the future objective of being linked to innovative hi-tech companies, or even starting one myself, participating in the Technology
Commercialisation Training was an excellent step in this way.LM: I must say that when I submit my name I was imaging that it would be an excellent way of open my mind and know something about management business. I expected learn a lot about how to create a new company and be successful with it.
MIETE-BLOG: We know this course is not a “stroll in the park”, it is a big effort, and we all know that the whole thing is easier if you do it in a team, as you are doing. Without going into the confidential part of your project, can you describe briefly the type of work that you have been developing since September? What was your biggest difficulty?
TC: It is hard to say, in our case! We’ve been working on very different areas, from new concepts of entertainment to high-precision sensors, and are still trying to figure out which one we will focus on. All of them have a good potential for business. This has, however, become an obstacle – it would be easier if we had only one technology to work on.
FA: Well, we are actually developing a technology that leads to a new concept on professional physical training. It’s been challenging since no one was familiar with this domain, neither were we used to talk to different professionals all around the world about it. The biggest difficulty until now was defining the value proposition of our product in order to settle a business for it against already known product and markets.
FC: The number of questions that must be addressed when you intend to start a business, especially when you have many attractive possibilities on your hands, has been the best and worst part of the work up to this point. The best because it is highly motivating to work with these new technologies and challenging above all. On the other hand it is necessary to take some difficult decisions and it takes a lot of effort to solve the problems that appear along the way.
LM: Well, you are right when you say this course demands a big effort, and that is probably one of the several difficulties we have. However the main difficulty is to choose the product we want to work with, because we will only know if our product is viable when we finish its Business Plan. Since September I have worked on several interesting projects, our team is developin a project on the swimming area.
MIETE-BLOG: So far, did the course meet your expectations?
TN: Definitely, yes. When I submitted my application I didn’t know it was actually normal for people to leave MIETE with nice prospects of setting up a business, so it has in fact topped my expectations.
FA: Certainly. I couldn’t ask less from this course and I expect the know-how I’ve been gathering to be very useful in my future career. Some things you don’t learn, you experience.
FC: Yes, my intial objective of gathering knowledge in starting businesses is clearly being fulfilled, but I still hope to learn a lot more until the end of the plan.
LM: Hummm… Yes, this course gets my expectations, however I must confess that I thought that mounting a business was easier. Despite that, the relationship and work in team have been great and our progresses admirable, so I can only be absolutely satisfied in being parte of this course (project).
MIETE-BLOG: Do you feel that a MIETE student (along with his team members) may leave MIETE with his own Business? Can you share your opinion with us?
TN: It has happened before, and from what I’ve seen it is possible (if not likely) that it will happen again in this edition. As a matter of fact most people have that motivation when they join the course, and when they don’t (either because they weren’t aware of the possibility or because they were skeptical for some reason) it doesn’t take long until a change of posture can be noticed among these students.
FA: I know that some former students kept their own businesses once they finished the course and achieved success. This course actually gives you the tools, contacts and means to do it and you spend almost two years developing that new business. I believe that if you have a good product and business definition from the start there’s a low probability you won’t succeed in it once you finish the course.
FC: Certainly, the answer to that question is yes. During the course we are presented with several oportunities, that along with the formation of a good team are the basic requirements for developing a business. The course does adapt to the student’s objectives, however, since all the process can be merely academic if so (s)he wishes.
LM: I think that mounting a business is the more natural result of this course. That happens in my opinion because that dream is shared for almost everybody in this course. Certainly will be created one or more spin-off from MIETE and I hope mine be one of them.
MIETE-BLOG: Let me ask you a tricky question. How far away is your new business?
TN: Which one? [smiles] We have one business looking for other markets than just the Portuguese, another seeking validation from air-lines and airports, another with a prototype in construction… We will hopefully have (good) news soon!
FA: We’re currently validating our product with market experts, exploring applications, interviewing professionals for added value features and settling alternative product applications for different submarkets.
FC: At the moment we are validating a few important issues of the business plans we are working on, so it’s hard to give a precise answer. I do believe, however, that we may be starting a business in the (very) near future.
LM: That is a good question! I just don’t know how far it is… Excellent work was done, however there is still lots of crucial things that must be done and whose result will change our team future. If everything gets ok, probably our own business is closer than we could imagine.
MIETE-BLOG: One final question. When you started in September, you were in the beginning of the 4th year of Informatic Engineering. Was it difficult for you to keep up with the topics and the work in MIETE Technology Commercialisation Trainning? Would you do it again?
TN: That has, unfortunately, been one of the greatest difficulties. My course has been very demanding this year, and I don’t always have all the time I could wish for. It is only a matter of self-discipline though, and I would definitely do it again under the same circumstances.
FA: Actually it was a bit difficult to manage efforts between two courses at the beginning, since my other course is also very demanding. Nowadays, schedule adaptation and team work allow me to keep track on everything and dedicate more easily to the TEC Sequence. I’d do it again for sure.
FC: Due to my highly-demanding course and especially because I’m also involved in several extra-curricular activities, it has been hard to dedicate all the time I could wish for to MIETE. However, all the effort until now has been rewarding and that motivates me to keep up the dedication.
ML: This is an easy question for me. For me it was complicated keep working hard in booth , my course and MIETE, speciality because I’m steel involved in JuniFEUP and other external projects, however I think I’m conciliating everything and so, I would repeat decision I took in September.
