Business Atmosphere

Creating a business from space technology was the challenge 58 business students were confronted with upon arriving at ESA’s technical heart ESTEC, in the Netherlands.

The intensive week-long seminar required students to create a terrestrial business prospect based on a real space technology.

The students participating in this annual event, jointly organised by ESA and Erasmus University’s Rotterdam School of Management, were divided into two groups. The first was tasked with creating business concepts from one specific space technology while the other was paired with ESA incubator start-up companies, where they acted as business consultants to individual entrepreneurs.

This year’s space technology to commercialise? A sensor from the Dutch Space company that detects the presence of various trace gases in the air. The winning business case was a skin cream, optimised for local environmental conditions.

“It was an amazing experience to support bringing advanced technology from space down to Earth, with the goal of improving people’s everyday quality of life and fostering new businesses here in Europe,” concluded one student.

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