Successful start for Batch #1 of the Entrepreneurial Skills Programme

Today's working world is characterised by rapid, dynamic change, combined with changing organisational structures and cultures. This not only presents established companies with enormous challenges, but growing demands are even being placed on young founders. Entrepreneurial thinking and action as well as new forms of knowledge exchange and networking are the focus here, alongside digital and data skills.

In particular, planning, leadership, judgement, sustainability, and reflection skills are just as much in focus as dealing with uncertainty and the willingness to take risks, collaborate, and work in a team. The assumption of entrepreneurial responsibility, visionary thinking, mindfulness towards oneself and one's environment, as well as the perception of self-efficacy are further important sub-competencies.

"The University of Bayreuth has set itself the goal of teaching its students these entrepreneurial skills and empowering them to be innovative. In order to fulfil this mission, the University of Bayreuth is currently establishing an important pillar in the innovation ecosystem with its Institute for Entrepreneurship & Innovation", says Dr. Petra Beermann, Head of Office and Director of Transfer & Innovation of the Institute for Entrepreneurship & Innovation.

The Institute for Entrepreneurship & Innovation...

pursues the goals of producing excellent research in the core areas of entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, and innovation, incorporating findings from this research into high-quality and contemporary teaching formats for various target groups within and beyond the University of Bayreuth, and shaping a regionally integrated ecosystem of active transfer and innovation. The state-of-the-art education of prospective founders and innovators (entrepreneurship education) is one of the most important goals of the University of Bayreuth.

The range of courses on offer has expanded considerably in recent years. Entrepreneurship education is understood to be cross-faculty and interdisciplinary, because entrepreneurship is not only interesting and relevant for prospective business economists, but also for students of other faculties. In this context, a programme for 20 selected (student) founders has embarked on a summer semester teaching them entrepreneurial skills in exclusive workshops and networking events.

The kick-off as the first of many highlights

He showed how the innovation process works, what mistakes are often made, and why it is important to think in terms of the ecosystem. He gave the ESP participants one piece of advice in particular: "Be courageous! After the inspiring session, expectations and requests for the programme were collected and discussed. To give the finishing touch to the kick-off, the organising team had come up with something special: a virtual beer tasting "Craftiges aus Oberbayern" with Bayreuth’s Maisels brewery!

On 16 April, the time had come for the first input module. Niklas Hebborn, partner at VC Freigeist Capital (Frank Thelen's investment fund, which many people know from the well-known format "Höhle der Löwen") was keynote speaker. He gave a speech on the "do's and don'ts of contact with seed investors", followed by valuable tips and insights for the benefit of the ESP participants. The next day, the programme continued with a workshop on the pitch deck. Fabian Brunner, Head of Businessplan Competitions & Incubation at BayStartUP, spoke about the structure of a perfect pitch and shared some valuable and practical tips.

Where do we go from here? Next up were workshops on branding & brand strategy (with Jung von Matt), sales & pricing strategies (with KnisterGrill) as well as legal topics (with Gründungsberatung UBT). In May, the programme continued with networking skills, mindfulness, and further pitch training. In June and July, there will be leadership training, further pitch training, and workshops on time management.