New Entrepreneur (NE)
Name & surname: Javier Orki González Expósito
Country: Spain
Sector of activity: Sustainable tourism
Have you already started your business? Yes, 2 years ago.
Name of business/website: _tivity / www.tivity.es
What is your business? _tivity is a local company which develops sustainable tourism in Tenerife. _tivity derives from “activity and connectivity”, meeting people through activities. Its communication system is an online platform which offers participative leisure activities.
Host Entrepreneur (HE)
Name & surname: Dr. Rüdiger Krüger
Country: Germany
Sector of activity: Education and training services
Experience in running a business: 30 years / 20 years CEO in the current company
Name of business/website: Volkshochschule Reckenberg-Ems gem. GmbH / https://www.vhs-re.de/
What is your business? Our company is a further education institution that offers education and training services as well as educational trips abroad.
Period of Relationship: 09/09/2019-09/10/2019 and 22/10/2019 – 20/12/2019
Duration of Relationship: 3 months
How did Dr. Krüger develop a long-lasting business cooperation with new entrepreneur Javier?
Dr. Rüdiger Krüger is the director of the Volkshochschule Reckenberg-Ems gGmbH, a further education institution in Germany that offers a broad variety of education and training services, including various educational trips abroad. Mr. Krüger was eager to participate in the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs programme, because he wanted to profit from a new entrepreneur’s innovative and fresh ideas for his business and was interested in establishing a long-lasting business cooperation.
Thanks to the programme “Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs”, Dr. Rüdiger Krüger started an international business relationship with the new entrepreneur Javier Orki González Expósito.
Javier has a travel agency in Tenerife, which offers sustainable tourism activities. During his stay in Germany, he got firsthand advice from Dr. Krüger on the quality management and the leading of an internationally operating institution. He further gained insights into almost all of the Volkshochschule’s activities and best practices by collaborating and exchanging knowledge with the employees of each company department.
Javier, in exchange, assisted in language courses the institution offers and even introduced new methods for them. In a German course, for example, he combined grammar tasks with a new and playful Escape Room game. Through the solving of grammar tasks on their mobile phones, the course participants were able to escape a room they had been locked in. The manager of the department for language courses continues to test this method in order to further develop and maybe implement it as a regular and playful task for the language courses. Javier further planned and conducted an event about Tenerife and the EYE programme, which was a big success and led to the attraction of new clients for the company.
The business relationship between Javier and Dr. Krüger went so smoothly and was so beneficial for the two that they have decided to continue to work together. They are currently planning a business cooperation through which Dr. Krüger and Javier want to organize and offer educational trips for students of the Volkshochschule to Tenerife. This joint tourism project will be beneficial to both parties and will lead to the establishment of a bigger business network and the attraction of new clients for Dr. Krüger as well as Javier.
All in all, both entrepreneurs perceived their relationship across generations and borders as extremely pleasant and positive, achieving the goals they had set beforehand and even establishing a business relationship that will continue in the future.
