Women power at Ulm University's Entrepreneurs Campus!

As part of the EXIST Women program of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection, ten women are taking off at Ulm University. The participants from various disciplines have already presented their diverse start-up ideas, from technical innovations to cultural initiatives. With a budget of 88,500 euros, the Entrepreneurs Campus will support the prospective female founders until the end of 2024 with intensive support, monthly grants and material resources. The target is to increase the proportion of women in the startup scene and promote innovative projects. EXIST Women is part of the German government's start-up strategy and offers women the opportunity to network with other female scholarship holders across Germany in addition to local support from their university's start-up network.

The selected participants include Anna Maria Zeljkovic, Frauke Schäfer, Humay Hamidli, Ines Erhardt, Jana Funke, Jessica Schiele, Lea Widler, Mareike Danne, Tanja Gäßler and Yonca Kayaoglu. In January, the prospective founders presented their projects to the university in one-minute pitch presentations. The majority of the start-up ideas presented were of a technical nature, including an AI-supported course search, the use of VR technology in the fitness sector, an e-order app for restaurants and a personalized knowledge platform. But health and nutrition were also a topic, whether in individualized nutrient therapy or the development of immunoregulatory agents. A collaborative model for the circular economy, transformation support for greater sustainability and a combined solution of services and consumer goods to reduce CO₂ emissions were aimed at industry. And culture was not neglected either: a start-up initiative for salon concerts was also outlined.

In addition to technical competencies, industry requires approaches to solve complex problems quickly and innovatively. Solution design as an essential problem-solving competence in complex systems and a precursor to entrepreneurship is a key competence of the 21st century. Students of technology-oriented disciplines experience excellent technical education, but often have development potential in this essential, practice-relevant metacompetency. The project aims to close this gap by developing and exemplarily implementing a teaching module "Solution Design", which can be flexibly integrated into all study programs. The results are learning nuggets and a train-the-trainer course concept. The transferability into e.g. vocational or school education contexts shall be guaranteed.

In our volatile world (VUCA1), the number of complex problems in industry and society is increasing. This requires solution designers who can quickly generate innovative solutions based on their technical expertise using agile methods.

Our students with excellent subject-specific training (technology and subject experts) often have potential for development in problem-solving skills when it comes to applying specialist knowledge in complex (demand) systems (e.g. mobility, energy, health) to solve problems and recognizing the added value of their own discipline. Solution design skills address a specific type of problem-solving competence in that problems are solved iteratively and in a user-centered or perspective-oriented manner. This includes approaches such as design thinking or systems thinking.

If the aim is to solve problems in systems sustainably in the sense of "sustainability", the term transformation or transformative solutions is used.
The inclusion of trends, such as digitalization, is also taken into account in the solution design process. If a business case is developed for the solution, it is called entrepreneurship (Entrepreneur).

Our overarching goal is to position entrepreneurship as a cross-sectional discipline across the board and to make it potentially accessible to all, especially to non-business students. We use the bridge solution design for this purpose, because this concept is directly connectable to the specialized education. With this project we follow the competence framework for entrepreneurial skills EntreComp of the EU Commission.
Following EntreComp, our aim is not only to train students primarily to found successful companies and establish a start-up culture, but rather to strengthen them in the competence to sustainably shape their future living environment by being able to conceptually solve problems in an innovative and transformative way and generally having the courage to tackle challenges in different demand systems (energy, mobility, health, etc.). For it is precisely these competencies that are in demand in a VUCA world, in addition to analytical problem-solving skills.

According to the motto "combine technical expertise with solution design skills - become a FLö!", this job-related meta-competence can best be learned by means of challenge-based learning. Our format will consist of digital learning nuggets including a physical and digital card set, which can be used online and in a flexible way. Secondly, we will provide a training for the lecturers with digital training materials and a two-hour training workshop (train-the-trainer concept).
The goal is to introduce these low-threshold courses in all faculties and as many degree programs as possible.

The Entrepreneurs Campus of the university plans to build and establish a startup and innovation hub (incubator). In this incubator, new combination technologies and business models are to be created and brought to market maturity by systematically linking life science and digital technologies. The incubator is scientifically accompanied by Prof. Dr. Steffen Zimmermann (Institute for Business Analytics). The aim is not only to create new life science start-ups in the Ulm region of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce, but also to increase the pool of entrepreneurial specialists for the regional life science sector by offering accompanying teaching and further training courses in cooperation with company representatives, founders and investors. The increased cooperation of the regional universities - especially the Ulm University with the Biberach University of Applied Sciences in the field of biotechnology - will also ensure a regional impact.

The first goal of the incubator is to systematically link subject-specific technologies from life science research areas, in particular molecular biomedicine, gene therapy and pharmaceutical biotechnology, with digital technologies at an early stage. This will increase the effectiveness and efficiency of production processes and therapeutic and/or diagnostic procedures.

In addition to the development of combination technologies and business models, the second goal of the incubator is to enable real market tests to prove the combination technologies in collaborative projects with industry and to accompany spin-offs.

With the third-party funded project StartupSÜD, the topic of startup promotion is gaining increased importance at Ulm University. The project, which started in June 2020, will initially run for four years. In addition to the InnoSÜD project, which deals specifically with innovation transfer in the region, the StartupSÜD joint project with the partners Ulm University (UUlm), Ulm University of Technology (THU), Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences (HNU) and Biberach University of Applied Sciences (HBC) includes a number of measures, which pursue the goal of integrating entrepreneurial thinking and action into the study, doctoral or post-doctoral phase, to make the topic of entrepreneurship visible as a cross-sectional topic and ultimately to establish a sustainable ecosystem for those willing to start up in the StartupSÜD region. The project is supervised by the Entrepreneurs Campus at Ulm University.

We support people interested in founding a company from the initial idea to the founding of the startup!

The StartupSÜD team aims to promote startup activities in the areas of teaching, service, infrastructure and networking. StartupSÜD thus addresses students, doctoral candidates, as well as professors and scientific employees of the university. In order to understand and serve the wishes and needs of the target groups, a survey on startup projects was conducted and evaluated.

• In the field of teaching, the aim is to raise awareness of entrepreneurship through various interdisciplinary, cross-faculty (curricular) teaching formats, as well as a graduate course in entrepreneurship. The already running courses Gründergarage and Business Instinct can be found under the tab Events.
• The Service department takes care of the consulting structure for founders and accompanies them from the idea to the foundation.
• In addition, an infrastructure is to strengthen the extended organizational anchoring at Ulm University and in the association of the topic of startup. This means that we create transparency about the use of laboratories and creative spaces in the StartupSÜD network.

• On the subject of networking, expertise and offers for concerns from the network universities are shared. This means a multiple win-win situation for you as a start-up. We also network you outside the university network in the region (e.g. StarterCenter IHK Ulm, TFU GmbH) and beyond to accelerator programs. We offer joint event formats, create access to financing, training opportunities, networking opportunities and, in the future, also a platform to visibly place your own project/startup.

Then stop by and take a look:

You can find out when our next events will take place, e.g. the Founders Lunch or BBQ, under the tab Netzwerkveranstaltungen.

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The Ulm University of Technology, the Biberach and Neu-Ulm Universities of Applied Sciences and Ulm University have joined forces in the InnoSÜD network. The goal is to develop a regional dynamic innovation system that makes an essential contribution to positioning the Donau-Iller-Riss region among the most competitive and innovative regions in Germany and Europe in the medium term. The university network sees itself as an active player in society. The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research as part of the federal-state initiative "Innovative University" over a period of five years.

InnoSÜD

• shapes idea, knowledge and technology transfer
• as a continuous, recursive exchange between companies and civil society institutions and the academic world, and
• acts as a central innovation driver in the region

In this context, the network focuses on strengthening transdisciplinary cooperation between business, politics, society and science in order to manage the transformation processes that are necessary for future-oriented further development and to increase the region's attractiveness and competitiveness. The focus is primarily on future tasks in the following areas Mobility, Energy, Health/Biotechnology. This includes transformation management and a Spin-off mentoring.

Further information about InnoSÜD