Entrepreneurial Roots
+ANDERSEN & ASSOCIATES was founded in 2013 by award winning startup founder, digital innovation veteran, and entrepreneurship educator Vidar Andersen.
[...]one of the most important persons in the German startup scene.” – Wirtschafts Woche
Andersen started out in Norway as a professional in the digital innovation field in the mid nineties, at the beginning of the dot-com Web 1.0 boom (and subsequent crash) era. Along the way he co-created a web-based game that had millions of daily uniques featured on BBC Click Online, co-invented, crafted, pitched, and won the first multi-million contract at 24 years old for the (probably) first web-based Learning Management System in the world for the Norwegian Government and led its production, created and designed interactive eLearnig for Big Oil & Gas, created and redesigned Intranets for large corporations like TeeKay and VG (the largest newspaper in Norway), and co-founding the highly successful enterprise content management system Plone (users include The FBI, The CIA, NASA JPL, Yale University, PjT, and many more).
After relocating to Germany in 2005, he served as Head of Digital (2005–2010) at the global lead agency for T-Mobile International and also held the postition of member of the board. During this time, he built and scaled the digital department, developed web-based management tools to improve reporting, transparency, and resource planning, and advised senior T-Mobile leadership through executive white papers and presentations on emerging technologies.
He led key initiatives, including the European POS launch of the Apple iPhone in close collaboration with Cupertino and Venice Beach, and the development of multiple enterprise back-office systems (e.g. content management systems for products and services, asset production colab tools, asset management platforms, etc). He also pitched, won, and delivered the dmexco account and launch - and managed digital projects for other major brands such as DFL, DRK, and Nestlé Purina.
Later he also created things like the first real Social Discovery app for the iPhone, "Gauss - The People Magnet" (2011 - 2013), "OneSec - An Instagram for One Second Videos", was involved in a fintech startup providing placement investments from foreign capital to the German Mittelstand, and more.
His work has been featured and recognised around the world by the likes of New York Times, CNN, BBC, TechCrunch, Wirtschafts Woche, and Die Welt, and has been seen and used by billions.
As an educator and speaker on startup entrepreneurship, innovation, and digitalisation he has been invited to teach and speak at Stanford, Cambridge, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), RWTH Aachen University, University of Cologne, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern in Switzerland, Dokuz Eylul University Izmir in Turkey, Qazvin Islamic Azad University (QIAU) in Iran (it was a different time back then, a hope of positive change was in the air), and many more.
As a co-founder of Germany's largest startup pitching event, the Rheinland Pitch (2013 to date), he's trained over 3.000 startup founders and corporate innovators how to pitch with his "industry standard" Pitching Masterclass.
Because of his long and broad experience helping large international corporations and organisations like Statoil, TeeKay Shipping, Shell, Esso, Exxon, T-Mobile International, Deutsche Telekom, Lufthansa, The Royal Norwegian Government, The Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research innovate and digitise processes since the mid 1990s, he realised that many - but not all - of the new methodologies and best practices he had been picking up as a startup founder were also highly applicable to - or could be successfully adapted to - the corporate world.
Applying his first-hand experience from both sides of the table, in early 2013 he started researching other best practices from the venture capital and startup world, adapting them to a corporate innovation management setting, fine-tuning what worked and what didn't by running experiments together with customers, trying out different forms and versions of new innovation programs together with customers.
That is why +ANDERSEN is able to offer tested and proven innovation programs and processes achieving 42% higher fundability, 86% survival rates (as opposed to an average 92% *mortality* rate of new ventures), at 50 times the speed of conventional methods, implementable for most companies in most industries, for all startup support programs, and educational institutions like universities and colleges for curriculae and entrepreneurial support programs.
