Entrepreneurial Education in Germany Jutta Günther, Ilka Ritter IWH ...

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Figure 7 Academic categories of entrepreneurship courses Academic categories Source: IWH Frequency Percentage Social sciences, economics or law studies 216 86,4% Natural sciences and engineering (including computer engineering) 23 9,2% Other 11 4,4% Total 250 100,0% In order to get some insight into the content of the courses, we went through the titles and brief descriptions of all 250 courses, identified groups of related topics and build several categories accordingly. Afterwards, we assigned courses to these categories correspondingly. 13 It shows that most courses fall into the group “Introduction to Entrepreneurship/Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship” (38%). This corresponds to the high priority of “entrepreneurship, general” expressed as a field of interest by the entrepreneurship chairs (see Figure 4). The second largest group consists of courses dealing with “business plan development” (26.4%), including the topic of business simulation. Some courses offer deeper insights into particular aspects related to entrepreneurship, such as “entrepreneurial finance” (9.6%), “legal aspects” (4.4%), “marketing” (2%). Another group of courses deals with “soft skills” explicitly related to entrepreneurial activities (8.4%). In the category “other topics” fall courses on e.g. intrapreneurship, entrepreneurial HR management, entrepreneurial growth management and internationalization. As regards the science-industry relations as part of the teaching program, we found only five courses dealing explicitly with the topic “commercialization of knowledge and/or innovation”. The course titles are e.g. “IPR and patenting”, “Spin-offs from public research”, “HEI as an incubator for entrepreneurial activity”. However, one cannot exclude that aspects like patenting, joint science-industry projects etc. are also part of other courses. 13 In face of the fact that we found as much as 250 courses, it was impossible to go through the detailed course descriptions or schedules themselves. 10
Figure 8 Content of entrepreneurship courses Content of the course Source: IWH Frequency Percentage Principles of Entrepreneurship 40,0% (Introductory courses) 95 38,0% 35,0% Business plan development 66 26,4% 30,0% Entrepreneurial finance Soft skills 24 21 9,6% 8,4% 25,0% Legal aspects 11 4,4% 20,0% Commercialisation 5 2,0% 15,0% Marketing Other topics 5 23 2,0% 9,2% 10,0% 5,0% Total 250 100,0% 0,0% Percentage Content 4. Entrepreneurial education and the science-industry link 11 Principles of Entrepreneurship Business plan development Entrepreneurial finance Soft skills Legal aspects Commercialization Marketing Other topics According to § 2 (7) of the “Hochschulrahmengesetz” (Framework Law on Higher Education) in Germany, the HEI have explicitly the task to facilitate the transfer of knowledge and technology. As a result, many HEI set up special infrastructure, e.g. technology transfer offices, to support the exchange between HEI and industry. In the context of technology transfer or more broadly speaking the science-industry relations, entrepreneurship activities of the HEI, are one way to facilitate the transfer of knowledge or technology form the HEI to industry. 4.1. Commercialization and entrepreneurship in the HEI mission statements In a first step, we looked at the mission statements of all HEI in our sample (taken form the internet pages) and analyzed whether (a) commercialization of knowledge in general and (b) entrepreneurship activities in particular are mentioned as one of the HEI missions in the text. In other words, we analyzed whether science-industry relations play a role in the “strategic” concept or self-image of the HEI. 14 We found that 40 out of the 49 HEI mentioned (one way or another) commercialization of knowledge in their mission statements, and 15 out of 49 HEI – nearly every third HEI – explicitly mentioned entrepreneurship as a mission of the HEI. 14 We took the mission statements form the HEIs’ internet pages. They were usually very easily accessible, called profile, mission statement, overall concept etc.
Page 1 and 2: Entrepreneurial Education in German
Page 3 and 4: 1. Introduction Entrepreneurial edu
Page 5 and 6: founded between 1901 and 1990. The
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Page 13 and 14: HEI, especially small private schoo
Page 15 and 16: Figure 10 Cooperation between entre
Page 17 and 18: The university was originally found
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Page 21 and 22: Infrastructure in support of Entrep
Page 23 and 24: Cognitive Science, and five special
Page 25 and 26: Entrepreneurial Education The chair
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