Social enterprise Tony’s Chocolonely and fintech start up SRXP are subject of the newly launched Entrepreneurship Cases

On December 10 the Tony’s Chocolonely and fintech start up SRXP teaching cases were presented to an audience of teachers and entrepreneurs. During his presentation of the SRXP case professor Sustainable Entrepreneurship at VU Amsterdam, Enno Masurel, focused on the development from student start up to a growing and expanding company. While Maarten Hogenstijn researcher Social Entrepreneurship at HvA, focused with the Tony’s Chocolonely case on transparency in value chain, the companies organizational culture and how they tell and sell Tony’s story.

About the cases

In the SRXP teaching case the successful development of the company SRXP and the entrepreneur Pieter Verbruggen are highlighted. SRXP operates in the Fintech (‘Financial Technology’) sector, that seeks to improve and automate the delivery and use of financial services with new technology. This case convincingly shows that there is ample space for young and innovative companies in the FinTech sector, with a right entrepreneurial approach.

The Tony’s Chocolonely case teaching case explains the story of this social enterprise. Tony’s is a mission driven company that sells chocolate with the aim to ban slavery in the cocoa industry. Currently, they are market leader in the Netherlands and have also entered the market in several European countries and the United States. In this teaching case their journey is discussed and three specific topics are highlighted: transparency in the value chain, Tony’s organizational culture and telling and selling Tony’s story. This case has been developed by Maarten Hogenstijn, Nesrien Abu Ghazaleh and Merel Sluiter from the HvA HvA-Research Lab Social Entrepreneurship.

Bringing entrepreneurship education to a higher level

As part of the IXAnext valorisation program the city of Amsterdam has financed the development of entrepreneurship teaching cases. In total ten cases are being developed to bring entrepreneurship education in Amsterdam to a higher level. Each case features a successful new venture, start-ups and/or scale-ups from the Amsterdam region. Although the cases can be used at any level, they are especially suitable for late Bachelor and Master level entrepreneurship courses, and for executive education.  Previously launched cases are Metrica Sports and Optics11.