After talking to five Innovation Workshop mentors in the runup to the event, we got more comments as the workshop got going. The mentors talked about the right time to foster an innovation-oriented mindset, the place of storytelling in entrepreneurship, and the all-important presentation of business ideas.

Julian Schubert

Comparing the Innovation Workshop to similar events he had participated in, Julian Schubert says he appreciates the focus on mentees who are at an earlier stage in their education: “I like that there’s more time left to challenge the students to overcome their hurdles, more time to inject a sense of how to approach innovation, help them figure out the right direction early on.”

“The last time I did something like this, it focused on the executive level,” he goes on. “But that is really too late. You need to start way earlier, and doing this before graduation is a very interesting idea.”

Julian adds that his career as a Business Development Professional makes him put an emphasis on bringing ideas to life: “The ideation phase is great. But you need to focus on what you want to achieve, and how you’re going to do that. Having a technical idea might be great, but what if someone steals it, or there’s no funding. So my focus would be on giving tips and hints on how to bring that potential to life.”

Sandro Monetti

A Hollywood-based broadcaster for both the CNN and the BBC, Sandro Monetti says the Innovation Workshop makes him feel like a judge on a TV show: “It’s like I’m on ‘Russia’s Got Talent,’ and they certainly have a lot of talent. As someone who has seen thousands of business presentations over the years, the biggest difference, I would say, is that the presentations I see particularly in Los Angeles are all presentation and no substance. Here, I see tremendous substance and very unpolished presentation skills.”

This gap is precisely what Sandro intends to address. “As a professional communicator, I believe that the most important element of entrepreneurship is storytelling,” he says. “And what I want to be able to do with my time at Skoltech is to help the students improve their storytelling skills. There needs to be much more of an emotional connection to the problem-solving aspect about why people should care about the problems in the first place. And that’s something I’m looking forward to working on both in comments, one-on-ones, and in groups as well.”

“I don’t need to teach these students technical skills — they’ve already got them. What I can help them with is to just connect with the real world by making a difference to how they present, market, and promote their innovations,” Sandro goes on. “I have seen so much talent here, there are so many ideas, there’s so much great innovation — the next stage is taking it to the world and having a global impact. And by having mentors with the vast range of experience and skills that we see at Skoltech, I think we can help them on that journey.”

Ziad Barouni

Approached upon his arrival to Skoltech, Ziad said: “I’m excited to meet the students and for the whole journey, how it will start and then after two weeks, how these projects will turn out.” He is an international business storytelling coach, an entrepreneurship consultant, and a multi-award-winning entrepreneur.

“I think that I get excited the most about my contribution in terms of enabling them to tell their stories: what the problem is, the journey of how they built this solution. An engaging story enables people to understand what exactly they are building, because through stories we can relate to things,” Ziad commented regarding his role at the Innovation Workshop, explaining that his perspective is inspired by being an entrepreneur himself and seeing stories as the key to selling.

“Storytelling is the field that I became passionate about the most in the past years. I help entrepreneurs, scientists, and students pitch their ideas, be able to tell it in one minute or three minutes effectively. So that as many people as possible can understand what it is, regardless of how sophisticated it is,” he concluded.

Sofia Yartseva 

After mentoring in a course by Dmitry Kulish in November, Sofia Yartseva is back at Skoltech again to share her expertise with this year’s Innovation Workshop participants.

“I’m currently involved with the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, so I’m assessing startups from the point of view of a big company: I help to find solutions that align with our business strategy and contract these startups,” she says. “But prior to that I was leading digital health projects at a major medical company in Russia. And before that, I was involved in VC funding, assessing startups as potential investment opportunities, and I’ve also worked for several startups myself helping them secure government funding. In that sense, I have both parts of the equation here.”

“I believe the Innovation Workshop is a truly unique experience,” Sofia added. “It proves that impressive projects can be done in a very short time — like sophisticated data analysis tools, prototypes of medical devices and diagnostic systems. I am convinced that with enough guidance and investment many of these projects can be brought to market.”

Olga Fler

Founder and director of the Meet for Charity auction, Olga Fler believes that mentoring is a two-way street with a strong situational and intuitive aspect: “You never know how a mentee’s idea will transform into experience. You just hear about the idea and try to recall similar examples that you share with your mentee, but you can’t know in advance how this can change a mentee’s mindset or the way they will pursue their goal.”

“Moreover, whether it is the mentor or the mentee who benefits the most from this experience is a big question. Mentoring others contributes to self-development,” Olga adds. “Besides, I enjoy sharing experience that can transform other people and unlock their potential. I saw people achieve goals right after spelling them out to a mentor. Everyone carries the answer inside; all the mentor has to do is suggest ways to find it. That’s what mentoring is about.”

 

Contact information:
Skoltech Communications
+7 (495) 280 14 81