Last Wednesday, the participants of the Innovation Office and Innosuisse Entrepreneurship Training went through an intensive four-hour pitching exercise with "Talking Science". During the session, the future entrepreneurs were encouraged to take the stage and practice real-life pitching, thus enabling them to refine their argumentative skill set, and to gain invaluable feedback from our industry trainers.
In the following, Jacopo Millul shares his experiences and his learning effects:
Q: Can you briefly tell us about your pitch?
"Endoglow is a project about an innovative probe aiming to provide:
1. precise diagnosis: specifically target endometriotic lesions, enabling accurate diagnosis and staging (first-of-its-kind),
2. staging and treatment guidance: It empowers healthcare professionals to make informed decisions about surgery and treatment, ensuring precision, and
3. personalized management. Endoglow allows for tailored treatment plans based on individual patient conditions, optimizing outcomes. Altogether, this will shorten the long journey of endometriosis diagnosis, from years to a few months, reducing the economic burden on the healthcare system and improving the quality of life of millions of women."
Q: How did the session improve your skills?
"While more focused on the science, the session helped me to fine-tune my presentation skills, for example, posture, the use of a more catchy way of speaking, etc. It provided me with very interesting feedback from both the mentors and the other mentees and exposed me to another pitching style (of the other mentees) from which I also learned different approaches (and hopefully I will be able to integrate them into my pitch style!)."
Q: What information didn't you know before the session that now seems to be essential in improveing your pitching skills?
"I still am new in the world of pitching - There are many of information I did not know! For example, I learned that while pitching is important, the true added value of it comes afterward, in the Q&A and in the discussion part. I learned that you might have at your disposal a very big and complete slide deck, which you need to tune depending on who your audience is. I also learned that a good strategy to pitch is learning by heart the first couple of sentences, and repeating them over and over, so you start with confidence, and you can focus more on what's next."
Q: Would you recommend the pitching session to others?
"Of course! I would recommend the session to whoever needs to pitch, but also to people who simply need to present something - is a great exercise and learning scenario to improve the way in which you go on stage and sell yourself/ your idea / your business. I personally think, as a scientist, that we are very focused on presenting our results and not much on how we do that: we kind of think we need to defend our science and rationale by showing our result, more than simply presenting it. This session was definitely of help to me to broaden my vision."
Are you looking for more information on the course? Please look here!