Technology Park Ljubljana, Slovenia
“Community Building Academy Ljubljana”
An academy uniting community builders from global STPs to enhance commercial services, brand visibility, and international cooperation. This initiative fosters entrepreneurial communities, leverages global business opportunities, and strengthens STPs as business development hubs through training, monthly meetups, and collaborative projects
Purpose of the solution
The Academy's aim is to build a world-web of Community Builders (CBs) in STPs, to create advanced entrepreneurial communities and BizDev bridges between communities and continents. Purpose:
• Strengthened brand to increase visibility of the STPs.
• Commercial success to increase revenue and acquire top-notch services, making businesses 7x more likely to choose STP's services.
• Membership growth: attract high-calibre members and innovative minds.
• Project Success: better members cause better project proposals & results.
• Global business opportunities: Leverage connections to unlock opportunities.
Who can do this: CBs, because they have excellent knowledge of their member companies and also their highest loyalty. CBs are the beating heart of any tech&ent community. How can it be done: Bring CBs to one location for a week, make them friends, train them in the art of community building (business diagnostics, how to build complementary teams, community spin on psychology, communication, business development…), and lastly: CBs make a pitch to their CEOs on how they will make a LevelUp / introduce some novelty in their community. Post-Academy there are 1x/month online meetups for updates on B2Bs and peer help to realise what we promised to CEOs in the pitches.
Impact
The first Community Building Academy has finished just before the deadline for submitting these proposals in April 2024. By then it delivered:
• 7 community builders (Brazil, Spain Portugal, USA, Austria, Slovenia)
• Training with the above topics.
• Already exchanged / copy-pasted some good solutions like fees for experts, good parties, building and understanding teams in companies, etc.
• Identified and started to work on at least (inter-continental) 9 B2B opportunities, 5 B2G opportunities and 6 speaker exchange opportunities.
• 6 pitched solutions to their CEOs that have all agreed to implement the solutions.
• Already 2 applicants for the next generation of Academy.
• These CBs now have their own peer-group which empowers them and increases their success.
Additional information: https://www.community-building.si/
What is innovative about it?
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Training particularly for CBs.
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Inter-continental connections of CBs.
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Monthly online meetups to guarantee results.
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STPs as business development hubs. Explanation: Companies value above everything if somebody can help them open doors to other markets/countries/continents. STPs should be owners of this flag.
Who are the main users?
The main users of the Community Building Academy are community leaders, C-level executives (but not CEOs), and experienced community leads actively working with startups, SMEs, and corporations. However, not CEOs, because CEOs usually do not have enough face-time with member companies.
Who runs it?
Community Building Academy is led by dr. Jernej Pintar and the team of Technology Park Ljubljana, with a few carefully selected external and international experts.