DutchSA's second Social Enterprise event was very popular with 76 attendees who came not just for great business networking and learning about the best known social enterprises in South Australia. The major draw card were the high profile CEO’s/founders from these social enterprises, who all happen to be young female entrepreneurs, awe inspiring self starters, brilliant communicators and magnificent influencers. Before we run out of superlatives we will give a brief summary of their presentations.
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First up was Taboo, the startup from Isobel Marshall (Young Australian of the Year) and Eloise Hall (youngest ever 40 under 40 winner) which sells female hygiene products online and through major retail outlets. Taboo donates its profits to One Girl’s education programs in Sierra Leone and Uganda that aim to keep young girls in school and help break the poverty cycle. When you are not the target audience, you can buy these products for girls who can’t afford them! Next presentation was by  Louise Nobes (also 40 under 40 winner) who started the 42 coding school in Australia. This school is free for students and brings an innovative collaborative, project based learning method that develops seriously good programmers that are in high demand. Louise credits the idea of starting 42 in Adelaide to DutchSA member Bert Verhoeven (Associate Professor Innovation and Enterprise). Finally, Carmen Garcia, who runs Community Corporate, presented about her journey that led her to combine her passion of organising community with helping refugees to land jobs in corporate Australia, and give them the full benefit of their skills, resilience and loyalty. We closed with a panel discussion, let by our own social impact warrior, John van Ruth and we learned that all of us can make a difference. Not necessarily by starting our own social impact initiative, but most certainly by engaging social enterprises in our companies, to take our corporate social responsibility and create lasting social impact.

This event was made possible by our event sponsors PWC (main sponsor) and Fragile to Agile.

That the 2020 global professional speakers convention was bound to bring some great speakers to Adelaide was to be expected. That two of them came straight from The Netherlands and willing to address the members of the Australian Netherlands Chamber of Commerce was a happy surprise. DutchSA joined forces with the Strategy Execution & Leadership Meetup to organise a breakfast seminar with Paul Ter Wal (The president of the international federation of professional speakers organisations and international human capital consultant) and Nienke Bloem (a certified Customer Experience consultant and international keynote speaker). 
We were delighted with 62 tickets sold for such an early morning event and attracting such a diverse group of company leaders, managers, consultants and interested people. It was a perfect mix for networking and discussion! Key take-aways from this Strategy Execution Seminar were:

• Talking about 'non-negotiables' in stead of the more opaque term 'values', when aligning employee and company needs, is a key driver for better employee engagement and creating business value - Paul Ter Wal
• Great customer experience only happens by design (because if it happens by accident, than bad experiences will also happen by accident) - Nienke Bloem

Many thanks to our presenters Paul ter Wal and Nienke Bloem, our DutchSA, the team at Stone & Chalk - Lot Fourteen, the Strategy Execution & Leadership team and Christo Photography for the event photography!

​We look back at another exciting innovation event with a great turn out of roughly 70 people. For many attendees it was the first time they came to the Tonsley Innovation District and the tour of the facilities and the presentation by Tonsley chairman Terry Burgess answered a lot of their questions. It made perfectly clear why the award winning Tonsley Innovation District is nominated for no less than 4 Property Council of Australia awards, including national development of the year!

The company visit to Sage Automation showed how a company that loses its original manufacturing clients (like Holden and Bridgestone) can successfully reinvent itself as an international technology integration powerhouse. Andrew Downs, the founder and managing director of Sage Group, also explained how Sage staff was involved in designing their perfect workplace in the Tonsley Innovation district. A simple but not very common approach to mobilise all internal knowledge to make excellent collaborative decisions. We suspect this is a cultural trait that is at the basis of the success of Sage Automation.

Joe Thorp, the Chief Executive of TechInSA, the government incubator, gave a powerful overview of the capabilities and activities to create an ideal startup climate in South Australia and presented a large number of inspiring new ventures. Joe's presentation highlighted the 4 major capabilities driving innovation in the state, of which our DutchSA innovation event covered 2: the Australian Institute for Machine Learning and the Tonsley Innovation District. Joe mentioned taking a lot of useful learnings from his visit to Amsterdam which took deliberate steps to become a prime hub for startups and investors.

One of the most revered innovation districts in the world is Brainport in The Netherlands, centred around the Philips high tech campus in Eindhoven and now housing 100's of startups and multinationals like ASML, Intel, IBM, NXP, Bosch, Boeing, DAF, TNO.

• 90% of silicon chips worldwide are produced with equipment originating from Brainport.
• Brainport produces 7 times more patents per capita than the number 2 global innovation region (San Diego).

Tonsley is very similar in starting conditions and size to Brainport a few decades ago and it is a good idea to keep a close eye on the triple helix approach that made Brainport the smartest region in the world.

When Brainport set out the ambition to also create the smartest urban district in the world, they asked Malik Institute from Sank Gallen in Switzerland to help them with the complex decision making process to develop a holistic and effective smart city strategy in a few days. Dr. Nam Nguyen is the Adelaide based APAC director for Malik Institute and also a visiting research fellow of the University of Adelaide. Nam presented the Brainport smart district strategy development using the Malik Syntegration process.

The last talk was from professor Anton van den Hengel, the director of the Australian Institute for Machine Learning. Anton was born in The Netherlands and migrated at the age of 4 to Adelaide. He returned to live and work in Amsterdam a few years ago, but the summit of his career is the machine learning institute he is heading up based in Adelaide. in the old Royal Adelaide hospital building. The institute is one of the most renowned in the world and has a massive potential to spin off new businesses based on artificial intelligence and machine learning. Anton's talk was about getting us to understand the basics and importance of machine learning, which was highly successful. Many are now considering a change of careers.

As always the networking section of our event was great and many new connections were made and old ones refreshed. Thanks all for attending and hope to see you back in the next edition!

Sponsors
This event was made possible by our event sponsors Mindavation and Malik Institute!

Flavia Tata Nardini and Suhit Anantula//Humanomics were the absolute stars in a sold out DutchSA event last night. A vast and diverse group of South Australians representing many industries and backgrounds had gathered in the Mayfair to enjoy a fantastic show, put up by Flavia and Suhit.

Flavia spoke about her journey as a migrant, starting up a space business and leading the creation of a new industry in South Australia and a national space agency for Australia. Flavia's business develops large volume low cost nano satellites for communication between devices (the internet of things), which will be a key driver for the 4th industrial revolution. We learned what it takes to launch and fund a successful startup and how their grand vision of affordable data communication at any place on earth, will ultimately impact the protection of the great barrier reef and reduction of waste in supply chains.

Suhit the showed how large organisations can find their ability to innovate again. We learned about structured ways of developing new business models by collaborating with your ecosystems and even competitors. Both stories of practice and theory combined brilliantly and the session was informative, fun, inspiring and uplifting.

It takes only a few people to change everything. It is all possible here in South Australia! We went home full of energy and new ideas.

We thank our speakers, volunteers, sponsors Mindavation and BusinessModelsInc, and our great audience to make this event possible. As one of the attendees summarised after the event: It was a fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable night, looking forward to the next one now!

His dad may have laid the foundation of Ahrens Group, but young Stefan Ahrens took the construction and engineer business to a whole new level after he took over aged 27. "It's all about being the best in what you do, and daring to take risks" he explains. "People are tired of big builders with blow out budgets and timelines. By emphasizing the values of a family business we created a culture of excellence and trust, delivering our projects on time and on budget". It allowed Barossa based Ahrens Group to grow up to currently 300M turnover. Impressive story.

With an audience of forty local business leaders Stefan Ahrens featured another inspirational episode in the DutchSA leadership series. Adelaide increasingly recognises the DutchSA brand for its more intimate events with local business leaders, allowing participants to get close-up in person. A unique proposition that we are proud of. Stay tuned for the next event!

Nathan Casserly and Alex Ouwens have built Ouwens Casserly Real Estate into arguably Australia's fastest growing independent residential property firm since establishment in late 2011. During this time, OC have sold well over 2500 homes valued at over $1B, employ a team of over 90+ passionate property people and have accrued over 1300 rental properties.

​OC's innovative approach to digital marketing, forward thinking business strategies and cultural structures has seen the business grow into one of the largest and most sought after independent real estate agencies in SA. Alex Ouwens is the current President of the Real Estate Institute of SA.

What a remarkable story by a remarkable young local entrepreneur. The DutchSA leadership series featured one of our own members: Alex Ouwens. Together with his business partner Nathan Casserly he started Harcourts Ouwens Casserly, and managed to grow their new business from 2 to 25 staff in just over one year.

Alex inspired his audience with his story of how focus, dedication and well implemented time management practice lead him to become a ‘corporate athlete'. Being able to shine a new light on an established and saturated industry such as Real Estate is a true achievement. But with their clearly defined corporate values (Authentic, Dynamic & Skilled, Optimistic, Passionate) that's just what they did. Just open the Real Estate magazine in the Saturday Advertiser and see who's properties stand out.

On 7 March 2012 DutchSA launched a new professional networking initiative: the Business Breakfast series. Special guest and featured speaker for this first edition was Bill Vis, the founder of the Adelaide based VIP-Home Services franchise ($110million turnover).

Bill shared the story behind his success, which is due to a number of qualities and regardless of the current economic climate: A keen sense for business opportunities; a willingness to try out new ways and to discard things that aren't working as well; an eagerness to keep listening to new ideas; having goals in your life to work towards and having a care for the people you work with.

​Bill stressed that he firmly believes in a flat franchise organisation model, which allows him to coach and mentor his franchisees directly. And he explicitly opened the door for his fellow Dutch migrants to join his franchise. See our video summary.

A packed suite in the Hilton Hotel Adelaide eagerly engaged with Bill, who made sure to spend some personal time with all participants. A great start of what we hope will be a successful series of DutchSA business networking events. Stay tuned!

The third installment of our Professional/Business Networking events series on 18th Oct featured renowned South Australian business leader Rob Chapman as a guest speaker. Currently the Chairman of the Adelaide Crows, Rob Chapman has a long and impressive professional history, including CEO of Bank SA and St George bank.

Rob addressed an audience of over 30 business and public sector leaders and shared his view of effective leadership. His core messages echoed those of Bill Vis in our first event of this series: a leader must show to genuinely care for his employees and should communicate clearly where the organisation is heading towards. Effective leadership requires approachability and consistency in behaviour. Rob insists that in his view the distance between staff and management should be minimized, motivation should be measured, there should be tolerance for cynisism and any if possible leader should take part of new staff induction personally.

Throughout both Rob's presentation as well as Bram LaGrou's interview and the questions from the room, Rob's captivating presence ensured a very engaged and inspired audience. 

Special thanks to our sponsors Lagrou Partners and Mackbel Films for making this event possible.

​On Monday 9th May DutchSA and the Embassy of The Netherlands hosted an networking dinner for Dutch companies visiting the Ozwater2011 conference in Adelaide.

Guests from various visiting Dutch companies and industry organisations as well as SA companies with interests in the water industry exchanged views and experiences in an informal environment. Guest speaker Joe Flynn talked about the water industry in South Australia, its challenges, and the innovative projects and initiatives that are being undertaken, resulting in astonishing results in water efficiency. What followed was a very engaging discussion about opportunities and challenges between those present around the table. 

A special thanks goes to local company Elwa (energy efficient hot water systems) for sponsoring this event.

A Dutch Water Trade Mission met with SA business and government officials on Friday 12th March, following a visit to the Ozwater conference in Brisbane. Organised by the Dutch Embassy and Austrade, the mission exchanged research, latest developments, and future opportunities with delegates from UniSA, the independent Commissioner for Water Security, and the management of SA Water.   

The core part of the program included a visit to the Water Industry Alliance, a overarching body consisting of over 250 companies representing over $1.5 billion in the water industry. The trade mission ended with cooling down drinks organised by DutchSA and kindly hosted by PWC.

Sustainability, renewable energy and water security are high on our agenda and of our embassy. After last week we feel we're at least one step closer to better water security for SA, by using Dutch knowledge and technology!