Prof. Klaus Diepold, Andreas Schmid

The motivation for the new addition was to strengthen the CDTM community across classes as well as the network between current students and alumni, to provide insight into current topics at CDTM and to establish a broad platform for open discussion on exciting ideas and topics. To reach this goal, CDTM introduced the regularly held Inspire&Dine events for all current students and any interested alumni at which current CDTM topics would be presented and discussed.

Each Inspire&Dine event has six short time slots reserved for different topics. The first half of each segment consists of a presentation on a specific topic with the rest of the time reserved for discussion. Topics can range from experience reports to insights into current projects to interesting ideas, or just about anything that might be interesting to the CDTM community. In the middle of the event, there is a longer pause to eat dinner and also to provide an opportunity for networking between current students, CDTM alumni and external speakers.

The first Inspire&Dine event was held on May 19th 2009, with about 60 participants attending. The CDTM Management Team was especially pleased that in addition to the current students, a significant number of alumni were interested in the event and found the time to participate. The event included of a variety of different topics presented by a diverse selection of speakers, including current CDTM students, alumni who have made their way into entrepreneurial ventures and a professor from the CDTM Board.

The event started at 7:30pm as a student team from the current Managing Product Development course kicked off the event. During the course of the semester, this team will be working on a mobile solution for elderly dementia patients and their caregivers. The students introduced the concept on which they are currently working and received valuable feedback from the audience on certain aspects of the solution they presented.

The next speaker was Dominik Lembke, a former CDTM student who worked on a research project on quantitative network effects in social communities during a stay at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information at Columbia Business School, one of the CDTM's partner institutes. Dominik gave a brief overview on his work, which focused on evaluating the applicability of the mathematical concept of modularity in the analysis of social communities.

As Dominik’s project involved a significant amount of higher mathematics, the audience was given a break after his segment to let the ideas settle while having a slice of pizza. The break also gave the participants the opportunity to get to know other CDTM students and alumni they might not have had a chance to meet at other CDTM events yet and to continue the discussion with the speakers in a more colloquial atmosphere.

The break was followed by a segment on alternative energy presented by Ludwig Preller, a CDTM alumnus who helped founded a company in the field of biogas and now works as an expert for cleantech investments for the venture capital fund GLOTEC Ventures. Ludwig gave an overview on the latest market trends in the alternative energy sector and discussed why now is the right time to start a company in this field. His overview led to a lively discussion about the current opportunities in alternative energy and how members of the CDTM community could leverage this potential.

The next segment featured another CDTM student team from the current Entrepreneurship Laboratory course. Over this semester, in the context of the course, the team will consult the start-up company Rabattwiese on general strategic options as well as on a sales strategy and a pricing model. Founded by a former CDTM student together with two friends, Rabattwiese is a young internet company that focuses on the use of coupons in online promotions. As the business model is still in its early stages, some of the interesting ideas from the audience concerning certain aspects of the planned solution might actually make it into the final product, which made the audience's feedback particularly valuable for the presenting student team.

The next segment featured Nikolaus von Taysen, a CDTM alumnus and serial entrepreneur. Nikolaus is the founder of Promilla, a company that offers alcohol tests at the Oktoberfest; the company BavaRoi, a distributor of Bavarian souvenirs that cooperates, for example, with the Hofbräuhaus and the Hippodrom; and PAY.ON, one of the leading developers of payment and risk management technologies and a global processor of online transactions. Nikolaus talked about his theory that entrepreneurs might soon inherit the role model position in the business world that investment bankers had before the financial crises. His controversial idea sparked a lively discussion about how such a development might lead to a value shift in our society.

The final contribution of the evening was a presentation by Professor Klaus Diepold, the Chair of Data Processing at the TU Munich and one of the members of the Board of Directors for CDTM. Professor Diepold introduced a theory stating that the number of possible products in a certain field grows exponentially over time while the number realized products only grows linearly because the required resources are limited. In addition, the implications of this theory for entrepreneurs and potential product ideas were briefly explained before the audience joined the discussion on the consequences of Professor Diepold’s theory.

After the final segment, the participants continued discussing various aspects of the topics they had heard about during the evening in smaller groups before they made their way home, taking away many new insights and ideas with them. According to the feedback received by the organizers of the event, Inspire&Dine was considered a great success by its attendees. Most participants particularly enjoyed the broad spectrum of interesting topics, the lively and engaging discussions they sparked and the exchange with other members of the CDTM community whom they hadn’t been in touch with previously.

Members of the CDTM community who did not have time to attend the event will have another chance to join at the next Inspire&Dine session on July 7th, 2009. CDTM is open for suggestions on future topics as well inquiries by speakers who want to contribute a segment to one of the next events in the Inspire&Dine series.