STUDY VISIT // Mihai Roscovan: “Estonian business practices could be applicable for the Republic of Moldova as well”
Over the period of May 26 th – June 1 st 2016, a group of representatives of the “Entrepreneurship Promotion for rural development” project implementation partners were on a study visit in Estonia with the attendance of: Mihai Roscovan, “Business Consulting Institute” (BCI) CEO, Lucia Usurelu, “Entranse Moldova” Project manager , Ana Mardare, project developer (BCI), Iulia Iabanji, Organization for the Development of Small and Medium Enterprises (ODIMM) CEO, Marin Roscovan, BCI expert and Cristina Ungureanu, CrepeOn’s business manager from Soroca, the winner of the second phase of “Entrepreneurial Rural Cup” contest.
Project’s partners from CIVITTA Estonia made possible this visit which included various events and important meetings with both students and business representatives at educational institutes, organizations and business incubators.
On their very first day, the delegation members attended the final round of the greatest competition of business ideas “Minds hunting” from Estonia, which was live broadcasted by the national television. Over several years within this contest were presented 3535 business ideas. As a Grand Prix for the 9th final season of the contest were offered 60.000 €. A very similar event took place earlier in Chisinau, where was held the “Entrepreneurship Rural Cup”.
Moldovan delegation has also attended another business ideas contest “KALEIDOSKOOP” at Tartu University.
Mihai Roscovan: “This kind of competition is very popular among Estonians which gives the opportunity to a lot of participants to became entrepreneurs or to take part in the implementation process of business promoting projects. Estonian business practices could be applicable for the Republic of Moldova as well. All we have to do is take them and widely implement.”
The next destination was Garage 48, where took place a very ambitious contest of business ideas “SpaceTech 2016 hackathon”. This contests gathered engineers, developers, designers, researchers and project managers interested in developing new space technologies.
Cristina Ungureanu: “I am a happy person. First of all because I have won the “Entrepreneurship Rural Cup”, and secondly because this win also gave me the opportunity to visit Estonia. I am absolutely sure that everything I saw and learnt here, all the innovative projects generated and implemented in this wonderful country will help me in my future activities. I think it would be a really good idea to do something like this in our country”.
Within this visit, Moldovan delegation, besides contests has had various meetings with company’s and business incubator’s representatives from Estonia. At these meetings they discussed mostly about the possibilities of small and medium enterprises development and multiplication with joint efforts and guided by the best business practices especially in the rural areas.
The „Entrepreneurship Promotion for rural development” Project was financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from Estonia via Humanitarian Assistance and Development Fund and implemented by „Business Consulting Institute” (BCI) in partnership with Organization for the Development of Small and Medium Enterprises (ODIMM) and CIVITTA Estonia.