Start-up Archives - Das STZ im Einsatz

Women in Business.

16.06.2020: online event. Juergen Raizner was invited by bwcon as speaker to the conference “Women in Business”. As part of ongoing Interreg project with same title, event was fully dedicated to discuss any aspect of promoting “Female Entrepreneurship”.

To more than 50 participants, Juergen Raizner introduced Erasmus+ funded project ifempower which is in its structure very similar to Women in Business. Online event was a great opportunity for Steinbeis to present intellectual outputs, particularly the mentorship program and to launch the newly established ifempower Support Point in front of a high quality audience.

Event benefited from large audience, most of them being women entrepreneurs who shared with the rest of participants their experiences and best practice examples towards female entrepreneurship.

Women in Business project was presented and represented at Ifempower events in Seville (09/2019) and Porto (02/2020).

Agenda of the event (presentations will be made available by bwcon):

Welcome by bwcon GmbH & presentation of the EU project “Women in Business”
Keynote: Tanja Rug (Unternehmenscoach & Trainer, Co-Founder “She Potential”): Resilience goes business
Anja Lange (Moderator & Co-Founder Innovative Women Network)
Christine Deger (Cybersecurity Expertin, Certified Ethical Hackerin & Founder “Changeboxx IT Solution”)
Samira Djidjeh (Founder & Animation Producer @ greenboxx animation & Chairwoman Digital Media Women e.V.)
Jürgen Raizner (Steinbeis Transfer Center): Ifempower project
Start-Up BW: Support for founders in Baden-Württemberg
Discussion / exchange

About “Women in Business”

The consortium of 14 project partners from 9 Danube Region countries brings together national and regional, public and private organizations and universities, whose specific thematic background guarantees a solid knowledge and necessary expertise by coming forward with appropriate innovative solutions. Project aims to bring:

policy improvements to be aligned to their needs of women in Danube region;
development of innovative solutions and training models for improvement of the entrepreneurial culture, skills and competencies among them

About “ifempower”

9 partners from 7 countries (among them – 4 universities) work together till summer 2021 to build tailor-made entrepreneurship curricula for female students and pilot it. Steinbeis is responsible for mentorship program within new entrepreneurship module. Mentorship handbook, available in 7 languages, was introduced to participants with emphasis on the ones coming from university environment as a useful tool to attract entrepreneurs in academic environment. Additionally, was pointed out especially the newly established entrepreneurship support point from Stuttgart. So, in Germany women, particularly female students who have questions related to entrepreneurship will receive support from Steinbeis Danube Center. It is to be mentioned that consortium organized a special training session for ifempower support points representatives in Porto at the beginning of this year.

ifempower. Iceland.

20./21.03.2019, Bifröst, Iceland: 2^nd Transnational meeting for ifempower project

Partnering other 8 well-reputed institutions from 6 EU countries, STC EAST-WEST Joint-Ventures from Germany is deeply involved in supporting female empowerment in the field of entrepreneurship. Thus, ifempower project which is co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union is aimed to implement this concept at the academic level. An innovative module on entrepreneurship will be accredited and launched at partner universities for 2 semesters. The module is addressed to female students who will benefit also from practical guidance and knowledge though the mentorship component of this module.

Project started in September 2018 and it is designed for 3 years during which the research-based module will be piloted between March 2020 -July 2021.

STC director Jurgen Raizner participated together with project manager Roxana Boboruta at the meeting organized by the Icelandic partner in this project. Bifröst University is an active member of the Icelandic and European research communities, hosting many independent research centres.

Priority of the discussions in Bifröst were the curriculum of entrepreneurship studies and the teaching material. Main responsibility of Steinbeis in this project is to design and pilot the mentorship program.

Results of the preparatory research study conducted by HÉTFA Research Institute were presented to partners as primary basis for the 2 days of debates. Steinbeis contributed to this research with interview-based knowledge from 7 German female entrepreneurs and 3 experts from which some are very interested in playing an active role in the future mentorship program.

Mentorship program is one course in ifempower curriculum and it is recommended to be understood as an “organic part of the module”. Mentors will take students to their enterprises and they provide professional tasks or show-up during courses. Thus in terms of practice (internship), students will get opportunity to work with mentors, assist their work, and get familiar with the general way of leading an enterprise. Mentorship program in the international curricula contributes also to promote successful education models, in this case – dual education. Innovative model is to combine mentorship and internship in a project competence study what is to be understood as basis for dual education.

A mentorship handbook serving especially universities but also Entrepreneurship Support Points (as component of current project), describing the complete mentorship program will be elaborated in English language and translated into Icelandic, German, Hungarian and Romanian by February 2020.

Mentorship program will be designed on best practice examples from Steinbeis university and other already existing successful female mentorship German programs which were analyzed by our Steinbeis center in advance.

Stay tuned with the evolution of the project on www.ifempower.eu

Start-up BW Summit 2019

Steinbeis enterprises from Romania and Ukraine were exhibitors at Baden-Württemberg’s major event on start-ups, organized by the Ministry of Economics, Labor and Housing Baden-Württemberg.

Event resulted in a great networking opportunity to present STM’s newest services for enterprises and other actors working on innovation. The 25.000 m² hall of Landesmesse opened for 350 start-ups from Baden-Württemberg and international partner regions, 400 B2B partners from large corporations and SMEs, VCs, Business Angels – and 5,000 participants!

Jürgen Raizner and Ana Turcan took the chance to visit most of the exhibitors in order to get update with the latest innovative start-ups and their solutions. For two ongoing European projects, European Early Innovators Program and ifempower, new connections are established as relevant stakeholders were among the exhibitors. State Secretary Katrin Schütz visited Steinbeis stand and got acquainted with the competence group of Steinbeis Centers in Bucharest, Stuttgart, Uzhgorod and Vienna.

Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann and the Minister of Economic Affairs, Dr. Ing. Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut, were enthusiastic about the high level of response received by the second, even more international, summit of the state campaign. The minister announced to establish the Start-up BW Summit as the central event in Baden-Württemberg’s start-up scene. In bilateral discussion with Jürgen Raizner, Minister Hoffmeister-Kraut thanked him for his commitment in promoting female entrepreneurship (ifempower).

Steinbeis Transfer Management S.r.l. in Romania participated at the event as support organisation for start-ups. Priority is given on knowledge based businesses. In most cases those are established in cooperation with technology transfer centers (Steinbeis Network Romania), hosted by universities. STM also designs and implements projects to foster the establishment of start-ups, e.g. the European Early Innovators Initiative (project of Danube Strategic Project Fund) or ifempower (Erasmus+).

Ukrainian Steinbeis Transfer Management Ltd. is established as a technology transfer center in partnership with University Uzhgorod. Students of this well known and highly recognized Ukrainian university develop promising projects with high potential to become succesful start-ups. Three examples: Compositions of essential oils with wide range of antimicrobial activity | Remote monitoring system with elements of augmented reality for fireworkers | Autonomous Injection Module Device. Steinbeis supports those young scientists.

Both Steinbeis enterprises, the Romanian as well as the Ukrainian, received strong attention from participating start-ups who look for suppliers. Discussed topics, among others: software development in Ukraine, manufacturing prototypes in Romania.

Summit website

Digital Danube

12.12.2018, Bucharest: Opening Session of 2-day-event “Digital Danube”. Participants are welcommed by Vice Prime Minister Gratiela Gavrilescu (Minister of Environment), Alexandru Petrescu (Minister of Communications and Information Society) and Jürgen Raizner, representing German Steinbeis Centers.

Romania holds presidency of EUSDR. This is both a great opportunity and responsibility when taking into account that EUSDR is in process of renewal. The Action Plan is almost obsolete. Structures of Priority Areas, Steering Groups and Working Groups are in discussion. A sort of leadership is required while the bottom-up approach in designing the strategy remains valid. Jürgen Raizner pointed out such challenges in his opening speech. He also referred to cross-sectoral projects, such as European Early Innovators Progam and ifempower. Both projects are to be understood as models for further actions to promote knowledge based entrepreneurship in Danube Region. It is agreed to deepen collaboration.

We thank Cristian Ilie for an excellent moderation of the event.

Second day of the event as dedicated to discuss projects for a Digital Danube. Among those projects: “Attractive Danube”, an ongoing Danube Transnational Program for improving capacities for enhancing territorial attractiveness of the Danube Region. Sabina Leopa, Urbsofia, presented a helpful output: Territorial Attractiveness Atlas of the Danube Region what will be followed by a monitoring platform. A strategic project of the Ministry: “One team – on stream” for creating a research and knowledge base, connecting rivers Danube and Rhine. This project is promoted by STM and presented to members of Steering Group PA 7 (Knowledge Society).