Ever wondered what makes an entrepreneur tick? Throughout IMD’s Executive MBA and full-time MBA programs, participants get to work with genuine start-up companies. The challenge: to help turn these innovative ideas into profitable businesses. The result: some great success stories from the start ups involved. Here we catch up with a few of them…

Last year a team of IMD EMBAs worked with FLISOM. This start up’s product is a flexible and extremely lightweight solar cell device that converts light into electricity with world-record efficiency. The idea is to provide electricity at ultra-low cost for the mass market and its one that is attracting a lot of attention.

In March 2006 FLISOM won the ZKB Technopark Pioneering award, an annual award acknowledging outstanding, pioneering technological projects at the threshold of market entry. Soon after the company was recognized by Red Herring magazine as one of the 100 most promising firms in the EMEA region for driving the future of technology. And in September CASH magazine and SECA (the Swiss Private Equity and Corporate Finance Association) voted FLISOM the second most promising start up in Switzerland.

Anil Sethi, FLISOM CEO, comments, “Life in a private company is unstructured, and IMD helped us to become more structured in our way of thinking”. FLISOM is now in advanced discussions with investors and potential strategic partners. IMD also provided access to senior persons from the industry including ex-CEO of Tetra-Pak, Nick Shreiber, who has since become an advisor to FLISOM. Anil's advice to other start ups? “Focus on funding, then on the commercialization of the product. Patents are key for investors, even if the technical team considers them unnecessary. Outsource all but the core components and, last but not least, engage strong, credible individuals as advisors.”

Carla de Geyseleer was one of the EMBAs working with FLISOM and found the experience beneficial: “We really got to see the day-to-day and long-term struggles that a start-up faces, in particular how competitive it is to get the money you need.” Carla and her two EMBA counterparts, Fabian Binswanger and Christian Andersen, became so engaged with FLISOM and its product that they are still collaborating with the company and meet up every six months. “We act as a sounding board for ideas, which I think they (FLISOM) find useful. We try to be as honest and direct as possible.”

Another of the start-ups enjoying success is SourcingParts.com. The Geneva-based company recently merged with US-firm MFG.com to create the largest online marketplace for the manufacturing industry. Combined they bring together more than 100,000 buyers and suppliers of manufacturing services and industrial products across the globe.

Founder and CEO of SourcingParts.com, Paul de la Rochefoucauld, claims his work with the IMD EMBA team made him realize how important it was for his business to be present in the US. “The students reinforced the idea that I needed to ‘think big’ and to think outside of Europe. They helped me break down my business model and market and take a fresh look at my business.”

He pinpoints the week he spent with the EMBAs in Silicon Valley - one of three discovery expeditions that form part of the program - as an important turning point. “I will remember this trip as one of the key steps in the five years of this start up. It represented a major change in the strategic vision of SourcingParts.”

Other start-up companies that are growing include Athelas - a Geneva-based biotech company that worked with IMD’s full time MBAs in 2005. It has recently merged by an exchange of shares with Berlin-based Combinature Biopharm AG with both companies becoming 100% subsidiaries of MerLion whose headquarters and drug discovery research centre is based in Singapore.

And Med-Discovery has just been awarded a grant of 3 million euros over four years as part of a European PROMET program to develop diagnostic and prognostic tools for the fight against prostate cancer. Again based in Geneva, this start up worked with IMD EMBA participants in 2004.

Working with start-ups gives both Executive MBAs and MBAs the chance to get inside the minds of entrepreneurs and deal with the challenges that they face. It’s an opportunity to consider how to foster innovation in their own organizations and roll up their sleeves and apply what they have been learning at IMD.

Click here if you're a start-up who would like to work with a goup of IMD MBA/EMBA program participants.