The festive announcement of the funding decisions took place on 3 December 2019 in Berlin. Prof. Dr. Thomas Bayer, Vice President for Internationalization and Transfer at the Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences (HNU), only learned at the event that the joint application had been selected for funding by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology. "I am very pleased to have been awarded the contract for our StartupSÜD joint project, with which we will establish a start-up culture at the HNU and InnoSÜD partner universities and specifically promote the generation of innovations and start-ups". Prof. Dr. Uta M. Feser, President of the HNU, adds: "We have been setting trends in entrepreneurship, design thinking and start-ups with international partners for years and can now systematically make this expertise available to young talents from our region".
A central advantage of the new StartupSÜD network is that the participating universities share their resources and infrastructures for those interested in setting up their own businesses ("powered by shared resources"). In addition to teaching concepts and service offers, laboratories and co-working areas with support staff as well as digital resources are to be shared. The potential for this exists in the many years of successful cooperation within the network and in the already existing start-up-supporting structures and networks, which must be expanded and professionalised. In addition, up to 20,000 students can be reached jointly. The network partners want to realize their projects by 2024.
The Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences will realise four individual sub-projects in addition to the central network measures: "Inter-faculty courses", "Digital Start-up University", "HNU-Gründer-Experimentierwiese" and "Networked International Start-up University".
About EXIST-Potentiale
About 220 colleges and universities from all over Germany, and thus a substantial part of the country's higher education landscape, participated in the programme launched at the end of 2018 to strengthen the academic start-up culture. The project proposals were evaluated by three expert juries. Further information: https://www.exist.de/DE/Programm/Exist-Gruendungskultur/EXIST-Potentiale/inhalt.html (opens in a new window)
