On 19 October 2017, students, companies, external partners and the INTENSE team came together for the INTENSE kick-off workshop at HTW Berlin. The kick-off workshop is part of the pilot run of the INTENSE project that is being implemented at five European universities. For the first time, companies and students gathered together to meet each other and to discuss the student consultancy projects that two student teams from HTW Berlin will work on throughout the winter term 2017/2018. Christina Saulich, Project Coordinator of INTENSE, warmly welcomed the student teams and guests and presented the agenda of the meeting.  This introduction was followed by a welcome by Wolfgang Treinen, Project Manager of the “Enterprise Europe Network” (represented by the “Berlin Partner GmbH”). The external partner “Berlin Partner GmbH” is an institution of the city of Berlin that supports local companies in internationalisation. Also present was Menno de Lind van Wijngaarden, Project Partner of INTENSE from the Hoogeschool Utrecht. Afterwards the two companies working with the two student teams introduced themselves.  “Soulbottles”, a young start-up based in Berlin produces sustainable water bottles in plenty of designs and donates money from each sold bottle to a NGO which supports drinking water projects in Nepal. Patrick Boadu from Retail Support/ Retail Sales and Frederik Henn from Sales brought some “Soulbottles” to the kick-off workshop so that students could directly become familiar with the product. The second company, “Index” combines a spectrum of PR, HR Marketing and services for market research. Index was founded in over 20 years ago in Berlin and has ca. 140 employees. CEO Franziska Berge gave an introduction to the company and to some of challenges the company is facing with regards to internationalisation. In a relaxed atmosphere with cookies, coffee, and tea, the two student teams had time to get to know the companies and to learn more about the tasks the companies had prepared for them.