Gustavo Bottan: "An entrepreneur is someone who puts their time and capital at risk."

Forty students from Tecnun participated last Friday, February 13, at 12 noon in the session "From Engineering to MIT: How to Become an Innovator and Entrepreneur," taught by industrial engineer and MIT master's degree holder Gustavo Bottan in the Degrees classroom Degrees School of Engineering. The session was organized by the Tecnun Gipuzkoa EntrepreneurshipChair and the Entrepreneurship Club, and was attended by the project director at BIC Gipuzkoa, Amaia Fernández de las Heras.

The first part of the talk focused on innovation, entrepreneurship, and creativity. The guest began by defining some concepts and then explained the difference between an innovative person and an entrepreneur. For Bottan, innovators are capable of generating novel ideas, but only entrepreneurs, through hard work and reflection, manage to transform them into proposals that add value and can become a business opportunity. In this sense, he stated that "entrepreneurs are people who put their time and capital at risk" to bring an innovative idea to fruition.

He then addressed the classic question of whether entrepreneurs are born or made, noting that "although some people are born with an innate curiosity, it can be trained and learned." Bottan also highlighted some traits of entrepreneurs, placing special emphasis on the need to have a purpose the importance of taking risks and learning from mistakes. In summary, he pointed out that the three essential traits are "an open mind, passion for what you do, and leadership."

To conclude, he focused on the phases that an innovative idea goes through from the abstract (at the beginning) until it becomes a reality, pointing out that "innovation has no value if it is not executed and implemented." He also highlighted the importance of conducting preliminary market research to assess the acceptance of the idea and, on the other hand, the relevance of learning to communicate ideas effectively, recommending the use of the elevator pitch for this purpose.