CASE - CHRISTIAN JØLCK FROM COLOPLAST

Transcription

1 CASE - CHRISTIAN JØLCK FROM COLOPLAST FROM STUDENT TO ENTREPRENEUR TO INTRAPRENEUR TO... INTRODUCTION This is the story about Christian Jølck a MA student who became entrepreneurial by training, stood out and then excelled as an intrapreneur at Coloplast, a global 60-yearold innovative company with employs. Christian became Director of Commercial Excellence & Marketing at age 28 and co-created 12 product innovations in only 5 years! Innovations that have increased life quality for people who would otherwise be strongly limited by their physical illness/handicap. Ideas for use: Ask students to make an inventory of means Ask students to reflect on their own career choices Etc. Overview Optional framing: An example on how a student can gain knowledge and competences through entrepreneurship that makes him/her attractive on the job market. The story about how a Danish student from Aarhus created his own carrier. 1. MA in Finance and International business from ASB (AU) 1

2 a. Took an entrepreneurial elective: Applied Business Development. They made a finance & investment plan for a university spin-out. 2. Based on entrepreneurial extracurricular activity he was hired in Coloplast, because he stood out. a. Christian had gained new skills within team work, product development and more. b. They did not push on with this highly potential venture. 3. His motivation was sparked he wanted to create a. He assembled a diverse team to compete in The Grundfos Challenge(GFC). b. The team was a great fit. However they did not continue with this specific project but stayed in close contact. 4. Co-founder. Knowing Christian's skills within tech-business and his ability within teamwork, the student he met in GFC asked him to co-found a project he worked on. a. By having a strong and diverse team, and by addressing a huge problem for millions of people with a novel and feasible solution they won Venture Cup Startup Competition in the category MedTech one of the toughest categories to conquer. b. Christian was Awarded Talent100 by Berlingske Newsmagazine 5. Co-created 12 product-innovations in only 5 years with Coloplast. 2

3 THE FULL STORY It all started with the mix of Christianʼs ambition to create something that would change the quality of life for people in the world and his interest for entrepreneurship, allowing him to create something innovative. He chose his master degree in Finance & International Business, which is ranked on Financial Times top100 master degrees as the only one in Denmark, as he wanted to study something that would enable him to fulfill his ambitions. While studying, one of the first choices Christian took was to join a new pilot-elective at Aarhus Business School called Applied Business Development. What interested him about this course was its focus on creating sustainable solutions in the real world. The course gave the students the opportunity to choose a project from a batch of patents, and throughout the course they had to develop a solid business model and a plan for bringing the project to market. The elective ended when they had produced a high quality business plan with emphasis on venture capital and an investment plan. Choosing this alternative elective had differentiated Christian from the crowd together with his full time job as Managing Director of the non-profit organization for students in Denmark, Studenterlauget. This choice eventually proofed to be one of the reasons that Coloplast found him interesting. But despite getting a job in the wake of the financial crisis, Christian still had a burning desire to create a break-through product a desire which seemed to take longer time to realize in the corporate environment. Christian wanted to build something in the world and as today he was constantly reviewing new ideas and opportunities. One day he got a call from one of the teammates that he had earlier participated in the prestigious Grundfos Challenge with, who remembered Christianʼs innovative skills and his ability to lead teams. He asked him to review a few ideas, the former team member wanted to realize together with his twin brother and another fellow student, both Phd students in the natural science field. Together they reviewed three different ideas, and despite the fact that none of them were ready-to-sell ideas, they chose to further develop an idea that would solve a crucial problem for millions of people the problem that people are dying from malaria. Millions of people are still dying from malaria, and the team started an investigation into figuring out why malaria continued to be a problem. The team found several causes for the problem: The method of diagnosis itself was insufficient; there was a high level of resistance to the current malaria drugs in the market; 4 out of 5 actually got a wrong treatment with severe health consequences; and the current method was slow, too complicated and not affordable for people living in the rural areas of Africa. The team got a medical student on board and while developing the idea further in the lab, the medical student went to Ethiopia to meet with patients and doctors to get a further understanding of the problem and issues. The product idea they came up with was a simple blood test with a color indicator, similar in concept to a pregnancy test. It would be able to diagnose whether the patient had malaria or not, as well as indicate which 3

4 drug to take to cure malaria. In this way it made the diagnosis process faster, cheaper and safer; and it would secure the right treatment method. During the development period, the team had the pleasure of getting in contact with world leading institutions such as the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and a former winner of the Nobel Price in Chemistry who worked for the famous John Hopkins institute. All of them concluded that the solution was very innovative, which only encouraged the team to take the idea further. With the team effort of using both commercial and scientific competencies, the group was close to developing something game-changing that in a simple way could safe the life of millions of people. However, recourses and media attention is always scarce doing a startup and to get feedback the team participated in Venture Cup Startup Competition. The team participated in the MedTech category being one of the toughest categories to conquer, but the team ended as winners, winning DKK, and getting great feedback and valuable attention to their startup. Further by continuously bringing more positive attention to his achievements Christian was Awarded Talent100 by Berlingske News Magazine. The team invested some savings into the project. They were offered 1.6 mio DKK of investment from the Danish Innovation Institutions (innovationsmiljøerne) but declined because they wanted to develop the product further before taking in venture capital. This was not an easy decision, but the team was sure that it was the right one. After running for a couple of months, the team realized they needed to put in more resources to keep going and did so enabling the project to run for six additionally months. Despite hard work and reasonable progress, the team did not believe enough in the project to go all in and paused the development to focus on their respective early careers. The team could simply not agree on a 100% dedication, necessary to take the next step, because of the uncertainty and risk connected to a startup. So, the team decided to put the product in the cupboard where it still remains today. Nevertheless, they all agreed to stay in contact to keep brainstorming about how to create new and bigger ideas to keep the door open for new ventures to make the world a better place. Putting in extra hours in such a fertile environment meant that Christian gained unique experience and new knowledge about product and customer development. Although he had only been in Coloplast for 10 months he was offered an opportunity to develop a new portfolio of products and create a new category in the market for people with intimate healthcare needs. The result came through around 24 months later when he launched a new portfolio of ostomy accessories, which were born after hard work across the development team in Coloplast. The team was through all the different phases of creating new products; ideation, prototyping and concept development, customer testing, pre-launch and launch. Christian had the responsibility of setting the commercial direction, making product design and attribute decision in close cooperation with R&D as well as building the whole go-to-market strategy and launch campaign. After developing the products in close cooperation with one of the best design companies in the world, one of the key task Christian undertook was to travel around the world to meet many end-users and listen to 4

5 CASE Christian Jølck, Coloplast their feedback and thoughts about the prototypes. Christian was the lead to ensure that this category was built for Coloplast to increase the quality of life for ostomy patients. Looking back, he learned that to develop a new portfolio of products with that speed and quality, requires to be ambitious even when things seem impossible, to be close to your customers and to build a lean team with strong spirit that is keen to execute. Today, when he listens to customersʼ feedback and the company receive letters stating that people now are able to do things they could not or did not want to do, he reflects and believes that he has been part of changing the quality of life for thousands of people all over the world. TOP 3 LEARNINGS AND ADVICES FROM CHRISTIAN - Invest a lot of time in finding the right people* and build a winning culture - Make sure to stick to your ambition the whole way through - Keep a strong focus on being close to customers to stay innovative Team, Venture Cup: - David Lindhard-Tordrup - Anders Madsen Pedersen - Jakob Madsen Pedersen - Jakob Virenfeldt Christiansen - Christian Jølck Core team, Coloplast: - Birgitte Stubkjær Qvist-Pedersen - Jakob Weldingh - Tage Pors - Christian Jølck * Venture Cup recommends great articles from our board member and Everplaces CEO Tine Thygesen: 5

6 Appendix, picture of Christians LinkedIn CV/profile 6