Enterprise Works - in Thessaloniki
01 June 2023
I am James Fearnley the CEO of Natures Laboratory. We research and manufacture natural medicines in Whitby North Yorkshire. This last week I found myself on a visit with Enterprise Works (University of York) to Thessaloniki in Greece not far from the birthplace of Aristotle, perhaps the most important philosopher in history.
Seeing the World as it Could Be
Enterprise Works - their tag line is Making Enterprise Everybody’s Business - is an organisation working to find “new ways to make our society safer, healthier and more sustainable”. As a University impulse it wants to be recognised not only its academic work but also for helping develop a “diverse, connected and thriving entrepreneurial community – one motivated by public good , which uses enterprise and entrepreneurship to change and challenge the world as it is, seeing the world as it could be”.
Nice Ideas, But Could It Work in Practice?
As a lifelong social and economic entrepreneur, I am deeply encouraged by sentiments like these and was delighted to be chosen along with two other local companies to join a visit to their Europe Campus, a partnership with City College, in Thessaloniki. But how would it work in practice how would their good ideas translate into action?
Understanding Culture
After a delayed early morning flight from Manchester, we arrived mid-afternoon into a sunny Thessaloniki, a bustling university city of around one million inhabitants with a student population of 120,000. Once we had freshened up we were taken on a tour of the city itself.
Founded in 315 BC the city was named after Thessalonike, daughter of Philip ll and sister of Alexander the Great, Aristotle’s most famous student. We saw remnants of the huge city wall that once surrounded the whole city as well as the Byzantium Christian Rotunda as well as the great Triumphal Archway built by Galerius in 4th Century BC.
We heard how Thessaloniki had been a constantly occupied , thriving and diverse community with Christian, Moslem and Jews for over 2000 years. We heard too of a modern day tragedy for the city when some 60,000 members of the Jewish community were forcibly deported to Nazi extermination camps. Was this cultural excursion necessary? For me it was more important than I would have imagined. The tour brought the city to life. I was able to experience something of the flow of life and history through the city and the region and to realise yet again that radical change is not unique to our time but a continuous, necessary and evolutionary process. It reminded me of one of Enterprise York’s ideals to “change and challenge the world as it is” and to see “the world as it could be”.
Building Relationship
In the evening we were entertained by City College at one of Thessaloniki’s many seafood restaurants to a meal I will remember for a long time for the beautiful fish we were served but also because I had sat next to Professor Panayiotis Ketikidis (Panos to all his friends). Panos had been a successful entrepreneur in US and had returned to Greece to support new businesses as a business angel and to develop the Hellenic Business Angels Network. He had been responsible for bringing to Thessaloniki the Annual EBAN (European Business Angels Network ) conference which we would all be visiting later in the week.
Money Comes Last
Panos was passionate about supporting new startups along with his business angel colleagues, but not with money only. He told me "Money is bottom of the list of the three key things business angels can provide new startups and entrepreneurs. Number one is knowledge and experience, number two is networks and relationship – how we can connect people with the right people, finances, support and money comes bottom of the list at number three."
Back from the Dead
The Greek economy was effectively left for dead 10 years ago but today it is being compared to the emerging economies of the 80’s. How can this have happened? For ten years I was told, the country lived on the edge, uncertain whether it would be able to pay its next loan repayment to the IMF. The anxiety we all entrepreneurs feel was experienced by a whole nation. But then something happened, Greek entrepreneurs started to innovate, to create new appropriate initiatives and slowly their economy and culture began to return to health. Over the last couple of years big businesses have move to Thessaloniki - Google, IBM, Apple , Deutsche Bank, Pfizer and many more. But business angels are also about supporting the thousands of small new initiatives, working with these initiatives often, to get good ideas to market.
Ecosystems and AI
Day 2 in Thessaloniki was filled with meetings and events all designed to help us understand how the local and regional ecosystem of entrepreneurs, startups, venture capital, business angels and other support for new initiatives worked in Greece. Enterprise Works with City College arranged high quality meetings for us entrepreneurs with companies and initiatives of specific relevance to our own business.
A highlight for me was being able to meet and speak to both co-authors of a recently published book HUMAN 4.0 about the AI - Artificial Intelligence, its benefits but more importantly its dangers. Clearly TECH was a favourite for investors and for business angels – FINTECH/financial, MEDTECH/medical, AGRITECH/agriculture and just about every other TECH. One of the authors was working with the European Union to explore how more effective regulatory frameworks could be constructed. But no one I spoke to seemed optimistic that real control was possible. What I did find encouraging was the emphasis on building real and meaningful relationships as part of building a new more sustainable economy. But I wonder how much these relationships survive on their journey from startup to exit strategy, when many of these innovative and creative businesses are handed over to less agile and less empathetic multi nationals. Do these big companies need to keep buying new young initiatives in order to stay alive? How can businesses find support and still remain independent and lively?
European Business Angels Network
Our final day involved our visit to the EBAN conference itself with business angels from all over the world present. Welcomes included messages from two Greek government ministers on their last day in office following the election the previous weekend. Panos as the local organiser welcomed us with more words about the continuing relevance of Aristotle who he told us called for courage, reason and risk taking, all qualities required by business angels, and I would say by entrepreneurs too.
The EBAN conference provided for me a wonderful insight into a world of innovation, initiative and risk taking. Some of the projects had a community quality to them like a circular economy project related to second hand clothes. But all were about TECH and most it seemed to me were about high octane exits.
The workshop that interested me most was one at which Sam Gardener (Director of Enterprise Works) spoke. His voice resonated most strongly with my own thoughts, that community engagement is vital if we are to develop the health sustainable businesses of the future.
A Moment in Time
York Universities partnership with City College and the trip to Thessaloniki was the inspiration of Kiran Trehan Pro Vice chancellor at York for Enterprise and Partnerships. In a very short time she has initiated something new within our entrepreneurial culture. Clearly, she believes that we need to work hard on creating new, more vital and sustainable business in the interest of the whole of society. As she put it “We have a moment in time to not only reaffirm our commitment to innovation and entrepreneurship but to redefine it. I want to give every encouragement to York students, staff and community members to grasp the opportunity to innovate, to be progressive, to create new ideas, and find new solutions to the world’s problems”. Enterprise Yorks trip to Thessaloniki, I think, has made a real contribution to that important idea.