On the 18th of August, Margriet Papma, Sarah Nietiedt and Dieuwertje de Vries, from the region of Flevoland (NL), hosted a workshop at the AER summer academy in Østfold. The title of the workshop was “Youth Co-makership and Entrepreneurship in Organisations” and focused on one main question: How to involve young people into the regional labour market?”
The goal of the workshop was to find new strategies to combine two important issues for the region of Flevoland (and other European regions), namely the stimulation of young entrepreneurship (of high-educated youngsters) and the stimulation of innovation in the AgriFood sector.
After a short presentation on the issue, the participants of the workshop were divided in groups to creatively brainstorm about new strategies and ideas to combine these two issues. The interregional groups discussed their ideas and at the end they presented their new strategies.
One common idea was to improve the image of the AgriFood sector and make it ‘sexier’ & ‘cooler’ for young entrepreneurs. Therefore, all relevant stakeholders (universities, farmers, AgriFood businesses etc.) should work together and use also the knowledge of other sectors like marketing or IT. For example, the knowledge of marketing students can help to start a campaign for a ‘sexier’ AgriFood business, with the help of IT experts applications can be created to raise attention of students, and pupils on the importance of the AgriFood sector. It was also seen as important to state that the AgriFood sector goes beyond traditional farming and that nowadays smart technologies and high-tech are used in the whole food chain. The idea of organising a contest for young entrepreneurs to come up with an innovative concept for an AgriFood related issue was also mentioned as a strategy to combine both regional objectives. Such a contest could be organised in collaboration with high-schools or universities. Finally, the possibilities of interregional learning and knowledge transfer, also with the support of the AER network, were mentioned as great possibilities to find new strategies to bring answers to both issues.
Summarizing, we are looking back on an interesting and fruitful workshop. During the final discussion it was mentioned that not only Flevoland, but other European regions gained new interesting insights as well and ideas for stimulation young entrepreneurship in their region.
Conclusions / reflections from the workshop “Youth Co-makership and Entrepreneurship in Organisations” provided by the speakers.
