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Personal information

Full name

Ron Immink

About me

Ron is a father of two, business book geek, entreprenerd, author, CEO of Bookbuzz and co-founder of www.smallbusinesscan.com. Both these companies combine social media, narrative, story telling, dialogue learning, collective wisdom, peer-to-peer and social learning with achieving business success.

Ron has wide global experience in entrepreneurship and SME development, training, consultancy, publishing, education, innovation and tech transfer.

Books
Books and entrepreneurship have been constant themes throughout Ron’s life. As a youngster he read the library in his local Dutch village dry, and his first business was selling books to his fellow college students. He studied Small Business and quickly decided that working for someone else was not an option. Ron has started several companies, grown a few, and sold one company.

Author and publishing
In his thirties, Ron wrote a number of best selling business books in the area of business planning, entrepreneurship and strategy. He subsequently spent some years in business publishing (co-owner and business development director of Oak Tree Press), selling other authors into Ireland, UK and USA. He still writes (blogs and articles) and is a regular guest on Newstalk FM, a national radio station in Ireland (where he talks about books).

Academia, innovation and commercialisation
In 2004, Ron was headhunted to manage Invent, the commercialisation gateway of Dublin City University. His role was to re-invent Invent and linking Irish businesses with the research and knowledge developed in DCU. He also managed a portfolio of over 40 innovative Invent companies in varying stages of development.

www.bookbuzz.biz
He left Invent in 2007 to found Bookbuzz with fellow business book nerd and author Yanky Fachler. Bookbuzz is part of a technology-free slow flow movement, using dialogue, peer-to-peer and business books that encourages top executives to engage with the greatest business minds and to collectively apply the combined knowledge to their business problems. Bookbuzz clients in Ireland, the UK and USA, use Bookbuzz to develop their staff, stay abreast of current management thinking, solve problems, improve decision-making and execute quicker.

www.smallbusinesscan.com
Parallel to founding Bookbuzz, Ron was hired by Ulster Bank/RBS to develop www.smallbusinesscan.com, a free and open platform where owner managers can create and share the business knowledge, the insights, the experience and the contacts needed to generate new growth for their own business. Launched in May 2009, Smallbusinesscan is helping to create a new beginning for the Irish economy, is the fastest growing business website in Ireland, and will shortly expand into the UK and further afield.

EBRD, ICM, OECD, Xbox
Ron is a business development expert for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, is board advisor to a number of exciting start-ups, a fellow of the Institute of Commercial Management and on the panel of experts in entrepreneurship for the OECD. In his spare time he plays Xbox, he cycles, he runs – and he reads (obviously).

Contact Ron
Ron welcomes your comments and questions, so feel free to contact him:

T: +353-1-2343100
M: +353-85-1006307
E:

Member for

4 years 42 weeks