Mr. Socratis Ploussas Socratis is the founder and CEO of PARNASSE, the administrator of the first equity crowd-funding platform in Greece, OpenCircle. He is also founder and CEO of MELLON Advisory, a business development advisory firm focusing mainly in investments attraction and business development for companies in food, technology, Bio-technology, energy and tourism sectors.
He is also a founding member and president of the Hellenic Start-up Association, a founding member of Hellenic Business Angels Network and member of the Board of Synergies - initiative for the development of innovation in Greece. Previously, he worked in the marketing departments of large Greek Multinational groups such as 3E (bottler of Cola Coca in 26 countries) and Fourlis group (master franchisee of IKEA and Intersport and distributor of SAMSUNG products). The last five years, he advised companies in their internationalization and investments worldwide. He holds a bachelors' degree from DEREE in business and an MBA in International business from HENLEY management school, where together with other Alumni and academics launched “HENLEY Emerging Markets and International Business Forum”. He has been awarded the Hellenic Entrepreneurship award in 2014, for Parnasse S.A.
In the last years there is a need for the transformation of the Greek economy and in general the European economy. In order to transform it the main ingredient is innovation – not only in products or services but even more in processes, practices, methodology and connection with new technologies. The current businesses structure does not leave space for the emergence of this transformation because culture and organization do not allow. It is the middle-class, the new-comers in entrepreneurship who will stigmatize this era by introducing completely new, revolutionary concepts.
Financing this transformation will be a huge challenge, since this has never been done before.