JE Europe Winter Conference 2020

From the 27th of February until the 1st of March 2020, Junior Enterprises Europe gathered more than 400 Junior Entrepreneurs in Brussels during the yearly European event. 

I want to congratulate first Mariana, our project manager for the organisation of this incredible conference and Florian, head of the Event department, who supervised everything. Then, Anton, our treasurer, who dedicated most of his time for all financial aspects. Finally, Daniel, for the management of the communication throughout the event and our social media every day under the supervision of Natacha who also dedicated her work for recruitment purposes. 

As Secretary General of the organisation, I had the opportunity to follow up on my internal communication responsibilities and supervised our general assemblies, where the 17 country representatives are making strategic decisions for the future of Junior Entrepreneurs. 

Furthermore, as head of network development, I am full of happiness with the value delivered to our stakeholders through not only the companies and internal workshops but also the exchange sessions, networking fair, and social events proposed. 

Last but not least, thanks to the Junior Enterprises competition and the bright help of our judges: Roland Moreau from The Club of Rome EU Chapter, Pascal Decoo from ING, Steven Price from EIIL (special thanks for the quote in the opening ceremony), Silvia Romeo & Marilena Toumazou from ThinkYoung, Marco Matrisciano & Katarina Haluskova from ABIS, and Fulvia Fiaschetti & Martina Sposato from Amplifon, I could lead the European excellence awards successfully with the Executive Board.

Congratulations to all Junior Enterprises, finalists again and the 6 winners of this year edition:

• The Most Impactful Project: Nova Junior Consulting
• The Most Sustainable JE: Lisbon pH
• The Most International JE: WBC
• The Most Entrepreneurial JE: JUNITEC
• The Most Promising JE: JeKnowledge
• The JE of the Year: Junior CentraleSupélec

Meanwhile further improvements, I extend my deepest gratitude towards our partners, Alumni, Junior Entrepreneurs, JEE trainers, the wonderful 14 staff members, the whole General Assembly, the JEE team and ExBo for their daily support to make the best out of this amazing professional, personal and cross-cultural experience!

#ChangeBeyondLimits #JEEWinterConference #StudentsFosteringEntrepreneurship #TogetherWeGrow

 Closing speech, Opening Ceremony, 27th February 2020

Hi everyone!

I hope you all traveled well to Brussels and you are all excited for this year's event!

Change beyond limits.

Apparently, it's the motto of our event. Don't make me wrong, our motto as organisation is “students fostering entrepreneurship” or, if you prefer “together we grow”, it's also fine. I am already seeing the JEE team guessing whether I am going to talk about our common purpose and values as I usually do. Not right now, promised.

2 years ago, the former team decided that “we generate impact” thanks to the development of the network strategy, last year “we stepped into the future” with the rebranding of our organisation and now, we change beyond limits? Okay fine, but, wait. I am confused. Why should we change beyond limits? What does it mean exactly?

We are not coming from the same background here: the majority of you are Italian, Swiss, Portuguese coming from a business, engineering, or economics bachelor study background but we also have the “others” that we usually don’t know how to classify because they are too specific to fit in one category and not enough to fit in many of them. Who are they? They are part of the youth or older generations, private or public sector, Alumni, former members, students in languages, IT, Pharmaceutical, Law from Romania, Netherlands, Spain…

So, let’s just clarify the topic for everyone, please and be on the same level not to lose anyone behind.

First, let’s think about the concept of freedom because it is closely related to change. We could change and create something new from scratch or continue to build upon what was done before understanding how and why. But changing has completely different meanings. We could qualify changes as tiny, big, deep, shallow, visible, invisible natural or cultural.

Change happens already every day, it just a matter of choice. It depends on how we look and reflect on the scenario. Either we see the glass half-full of water or half empty. But we can also change our minds and consider the glass completely full. Indeed, it is half full of water and half full of air. It is a matter of deciding and change our perspectives.

Now, what’s about the limits? Limits are defined as we set them for ourselves, for our Junior Enterprises, for the others to protect ourselves. We create borders, boundaries, barriers, walls between each other. We can wonder, what’s keeping us apart from fears to onboarding together and starting the journey?

Imagine you have a line just here, in theatre it is a performance convention called the “4th wall”, which is indeed invisible but separates the audience from the actors. It is easy to set this line as a limit of the space, and we are not supposed to break the rules, right? What if now, I break the rules and just cross the line, do I change beyond limits?

So, the first step to change beyond limits is of course to see the norms we follow to start crossing them. Nevertheless, to implement a change beyond limits, we need a common transition phase, a vision, a direction. This is where movement and actions are required.

We could, of course, build a ship and that’s already a change itself but if we do not know where we want to travel, we are just blocked by limits.

Change leans on development while limits lean on constructions. To build bridges, we first need to break these barriers. However, changes and limits could be rather for the best or the worst. It is a choice between the freedom of change and the security of limits.

We shall go beyond our comfort zone!

The more we go beyond limits, the more we change. Usually, I am the one struggling to decide and slowing down the decision-making process, asking questions to be sure it is the best option to move forward. Because it is easy to make quick decisions but the meaning and the coherence behind those decisions is rather more difficult to find.

My speech could end here, but an important part would be missing because, in the end, we do not change beyond limits just because we want to try something different. Take a reflection moment, question the status quo and the meaning of this change. Why do we want to change? What is the purpose we are trying to follow? What are the values we are driven by? We are 400 Junior Entrepreneurs today in this room, but why are you here?

I believe in humanity and in positive and impactful changes. We are Junior Entrepreneurs for some reason. Not only because we want to acquire a professional, a personal or cross-cultural experience, but also because we believe that together we are these sustainable changemakers capable and committed to generate a responsible impact on three different levels: Academia, business world, and society.

We are responsible for being truly ourselves and accepting it. So it is. And this is probably the most challenging goal we have. 

Let’s be honest and realistic, we cannot change the world alone. But as youth generation and because we are actively listening to older generations' advice, we are creating a change.

We are the proof that youth is dedicated and is taking actions to change for a better society, a society we would rather prefer to live in, a society we would rather provide to future generations. We cannot change the errors and failures from the past but we can learn from them and try our best to do even more, even better and this is what Junior Entrepreneurs aim for.

This is why we, as a network, committed ourselves to sustainability and to the 17 sustainable development goals of the United Nations for 2030. We are active citizens committed to a better society and we wonder in which world we want to live in tomorrow.

But we cannot force the others to change. What we are only able to change is ourselves. I am personally convinced that if I just try to always evolve and develop as much as possible, I will just lead by example to change beyond limits. And this is what truly matters. This is what I am doing to change beyond limits. What about you?

Usually, we recognize the best Junior Enterprises, thanks to their results. For this year's edition, we decided not to only involve the meaningful results of the junior enterprises but also their inspiring mindset and the responsible attitude of their Junior Entrepreneurs. Excellence Awards finalists are the great examples of the best Junior Enterprises who changed beyond limits not only in terms of results but also in terms of mindset and attitude.

What I analysed and observed since the start of my journey in our Junior Enterprise world, is this constant focus on economic efficiency on top of valuable relationships.

I might be biased since we are living with two Germans stubborn on efficiency but that’s the same focus we can notice in the business world nowadays. And I am not saying it is wrong because it has different priorities. I am just saying we should also be more open to difference. 

Difference is part of our European diversity which should not be considered as a weakness but as a strength. This diversity makes us change beyond limits. And if this “other” category that I previously mentioned is still belonging there, it is because they can also bring this unconventional change.

We must accept our own limits as well as those of others. We should stop comparing, accept more, and welcome our differences to start collaborating to grow together. Acknowledging and accepting our limits is the first step towards a responsible attitude. Leading by example is about the humbleness of sharing and raising awareness among others.

We become ourselves and we can only overcome barriers thanks to the challenges, interactions, and connections we have with the others. Use the next three days to take on new challenges and build new connections. This event is a huge opportunity for you to empower yourself as well as empower others and change beyond limits.

Thank you,