From Engineer to Entrepreneur: Lessons in Turning Ideas into Reality - Keynote for KICK & LEJON

In a recent keynote for KULeuven KICK and LEJON, Elegnano Founder, Katrien Herdewyn, shared the mindset shifts, strategic pivots, and resilience required to navigate uncertainty. Not as a how-to guide, but as candid reflections on what it takes to build something sustainable. Below a summary of the four lessons learned on her entrepreneurial journey from the past decade:

After graduating in Engineering at KULeuven, I started Elegnano, a company at the intersection of technology, materials, and fashion. Over the past decade, I’ve learned that building a business isn’t about having all the answers upfront. It’s about adaptability, resourcefulness, and clarity of purpose, especially when turning bold ideas into reality.

Elegnano is built on the understanding that there is a gap between what’s possible in the lab and what’s valuable in the market. Universtiy innovation often starts with TRL levels - but even after you overcome all technical difficulties, the real challenge is often turning those levels into a viable business. That demands more than technical expertise. It requires adaptability to pivot when assumptions fail, resourcefulness to stretch limited means, and clarity of purpose to stay the course when the path is unclear: Why did you start in the first place?

2017: Trust in Your Vision

Early on, I realized that a company is only as strong as the vision behind it. Too often, startups adopt a mission and vision as part of a business plan or pitch deck exercise. For Elegnano, it was the opposite: we were a mission with a company. That meant making decisions based on what aligned with the impact we wanted to create, not just what was convenient or conventional.

One of the hardest lessons? What’s good for you and what’s good for the company aren’t always the same thing. As an entrepreneur, you’re shaping a path that reflects your values, even when it’s the harder road. And while advice from mentors, incubators, and accelerators is invaluable, you can’t outsource your vision. Defending your choices, even when they go against the grain, is part of what defines you as an entrepreneur. It’s a delicate balance: stay coachable, but don’t let others dilute what makes your approach unique.

2020: Resilience & Felxibility in the Face of Adversity

The pandemic forced a reckoning. Markets shifted, supply chains broke, and uncertainty became the only constant. For Elegnano, setbacks became opportunities to refine our model. We explored new avenues, which not only got us through the pandemic in a period where fashion was hit very hard, but also sharpened our understanding of where our approach and expertise truly added value. Resilience in business isn’t about enduring hardship, it’s about using it as a catalyst for growth.

2022: Dream Big. But Don't Do It Alone.

The post-pandemic era brought another inflection point. Innovation isn’t just about the product, it’s about the ecosystem. Technology now infiltrates every part of our lives, and the most impactful solutions often come from collaborations that bridge gaps, between industries, backgrounds, and ways of thinking. If there’s one takeaway from a decade of building innovation, it’s this: the future belongs to those who can connect the dots between what’s possible and what’s needed. That requires:

• Adaptability to respond to what the market (or the world) throws at you.

• Resourcefulness to do more with less.

• Vision to guide every decision, big or small.

2026: Be Authentic

While technology makes it easy to stay connected, we’re using it more and more to skip actual connecting. Don’t focus on networking strategically. Build a genuine network. A valuable network is not transactional - don’t think in terms of what others have to offer you or what you have to offer them. Instead, connect out of genuine interest and curiosity. Learn about others, their work, and their experiences. Start early - even as a student - and you’ll have a true network 10 years down the road that’s impossible to build by doubling down on networking events every week when you need something.