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The Spirit of Entrepreneurship: Venturing Smart in the Agro-Food Sector

by Martha Kontodaimon
Discussion with guests from the field of Agro-Food businesses

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The second discussion of the "The Spirit of Entrepreneurship" series took place on Tuesday 31st of March and was co-organized by the National and Technical University of Athens, Athens University of Economics and Business and the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Greece. The event focused on the Agro-Food sector. The discussants all coming from the sector exposed their entrepreneurial experience and exchanged practices, knowledge and shared challenges of the Agro-Food field.

Vaso Papadimitriou, Director General of the Federation of Hellenic Food Industries, gave introduction to the discussion. In presenting an overview of the Greek Agro-Food sector, pointing the strengths and weaknesses and the initiatives taken to support innovation and cooperation in the sector.

Presentations from four Greek start uppers followed: Pavlos Georgiadis, Co-Founder of "We Deliver Taste" (Athens – Milan – Prague), Dimitrios Stratakis, Managing Director of "Unismack" (Greece), Apostolis Polymenakos, Co-operate of "Adamantina House", Christos Pardalis, Co-Founder of "Adamantina House" (Greece) and Dimitris Koutsolioutsos, Founder of "Farmers Republic" (Greece).

The discussants came from all the fields relevant in the sector: from production to distribution and refinement. During the discussion, the participants presented possibilities, grieves, fears as well as success and development stories. In this way they provided the public with a complete description of what does it really mean to start up and establish a business in the Agro-Food Sector.

The moderator Ioanna Sapfo Pepelasis, Associate Professor of the Athens University of Economics and Business, coordinated the discussion with the participation of the audience, pinpointing the main determinant factors and challenges in starting up.

The main conclusions were the following: There are common fears and anxieties of the entrepreneurs at the beginning of their start-ups which one should face with rationality and a well-organized business plan. Rigorous market research and understanding and product innovation can be crucial to success. There will always arise difficulties on how to gain funding and start a successful collaboration with other businesses, but one must not give up and continue the hard work no matter what the occurrences are. Again the intrinsic motivation of the company’s founder, the team dynamics, as well as the hard hours of work in order for the Start Up to be built, established and run, were the main ingredients that glued the Start UP together and lead it on becoming successful.

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Contact

Martha Kontodaimon

Martha Kontodaimon bild

Project Manager - Research Associate

Martha.Kontodaimon@kas.de +30 210 7247 126
Discussion
March 31, 2015
Radisson Blu Park Hotel, 10 Alexandras Avenue 10682 Athens Greece
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