Elements4Founding at the International Entrepreneurship Education Summit

Prof. Dr Alexander Brehm, Dr Andreas Wahl and Kathrin Lichius presented the Elements4Founding project. Elements4Founding is a project of the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Science (ENI) at the University of Stuttgart.

In the Best Practice Track, Prof. Dr. Alexander Brehm and Dr. Andreas Wahl presented an overview of the entire project:

The aim of the project is to develop a holistic, sustainable approach to sensitising and qualifying doctoral students and post-docs for the topic of entrepreneurship. 

On the one hand, the doctoral students and post-docs are to be motivated to perceive the path as a possible career path. On the other hand, they should be taught a set of entrepreneurship methods in order to be able to transfer and commercialise scientific breakthroughs. Currently, only a fraction of the innovation potential of university research is transferred to the economy and society. The programme is aimed at doctoral students and post-docs from all disciplines and institutes at the University of Stuttgart.

Existing approaches at universities usually focus on the target group of students and there are hardly any validated approaches that explicitly address doctoral students and post-docs. The accompanying research for the project should therefore result in a best-practice approach for entrepreneurship education programmes at universities for doctoral students and post-docs.

In the Science Pitch Track, Kathrin Lichius presented initial findings on the questions:

• Can we motivate and empower more early career researchers to use/implement/transfer their research results and follow their passion? 

Early awareness-raising, flexible and individualisable qualification opportunities and transparency about the university's wide-ranging support offer are relevant building blocks here, for example.

• How does the academic context shape the image of young researchers and their meaning of entrepreneurship

Here, there are strong contrasts in the factors that shape the idea of entrepreneurship of doctoral students and post-docs. In the academic context, for example, the start-up culture of the university, the respective institute, the supervising professor, the previous studies, but also role models and contact with industry partners are influential.

The International Entrepreneurship Education Summit made it possible to network the project with other universities in Germany.