"115 years of HHL - 11+5 HHL faces" portraits Andreas Pinkwart

[HHL gGmbH - 25.04.2013] HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management, the first business school established in Germany, celebrates its 115th anniversary this year. The institution was founded in the Auditorium Maximum of Leipzig University on April 25, 1898, to train young merchants seeking to lead large companies in an appropriate manner. After World War II, it was absorbed into Leipzig University: in 1969, the GDR opened a business school with a focus on domestic trade. In 1992, today's HHL was re-established as a private university by the Leipzig Chamber of Industry and Commerce and the Association of Friends of HHL.

Teaching all its programs in English, HHL has been one of the trailblazers in Germany since the mid-1990s. Long before the financial crisis, HHL was one of the first business schools to focus on the conditions for responsible and sustainable leadership.
HHL now responds to the new challenges of leadership in the 21st century through its innovate125 Future Concept, keeping in tune with a holistic approach and expanding the dimensions of effectiveness and responsibility, aided by the perspective of innovation.

On the occasion of the 115th anniversary of HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management, the school publishes the "11+5 HHL faces” series introducing personalities connected with HHL.

*** Andreas Pinkwart (*1960)

Prof. Dr. Andreas Pinkwart is the Dean of HHL and also holds the Stiftungsfonds Deutsche Bank Chair for Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship.

After completing his training as a banker he studied Macroeconomics and Business Administration until 1987 in Münster and Bonn, where he also received his doctorate in 1991. Following his graduation from university, he ran the office of the leader of the FDP (Free Democratic Party) parliamentary group before continuing his scientific career with professorships in Düsseldorf and Siegen. He became a Member of the German Bundestag (the Federal Parliament) and Regional Chairman of the FDP in North Rhine-Westphalia in 2002. Between 2005 and 2010, he served as Minister for Innovation, Science, Research and Technology as well as Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia. During this time, he was on an unpaid leave from his Chair of Business Administration at the University of Siegen. In 2011, he returned to science completing a research sojourn at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. In April 2011, he started in his current position in Leipzig.

Together with HHL Chancellor Dr. Axel Baisch and the various bodies of the school, he continues to develop HHL based on the new innovate125 Future Concept. Prof. Dr. Pinkwart says: "When HHL celebrates its 125th anniversary in ten years, it should have reached an outstanding position in Europe similar to the one it has already achieved in Germany. To achieve this goal, we want to expand the faculty, intensify research work and increase the number of students in a quality-oriented fashion. Last year, we were able to raise the number of new enrollments by fifty percent. We have seen this positive trend continue this year. According to a ranking by the German Academic Exchange Service DAAD, HHL is already one of the most international universities in Germany."

An increased level of internationality is among the milestones achieved so far in addition to other intermediate goals, such as increasing the numbers of students and professorships. The network of international partner universities grew from 110 to 130. "The schools we were able to add to our list of partners are top universities such as Peking University," says the HHL Dean. The academic side of the school was re-organized by introducing a group structure and the opening of the cross-group Center for Advanced Studies in Management (CASiM) to increase the research performance. Prof. Dr. Pinkwart adds, "We are working on a new Leipzig Leadership Model in close cooperation with companies from the practice. For this purpose, we created the HHL Forum 'Rethinking Leadership'. After a successful launch two years ago, we can now continue this project with additional funding by the Heinz Nixdorf Foundation."

International orientation, regional engagement - following this motto, cooperation with local partners plays an important role for HHL. Prof. Dr. Pinkwart explains: "We are glad to be able to work closely with numerous universities, research institutions and groundbreaking companies in such an attractive innovation region. This local collaboration is well-represented through the BioEconomy leading-edge cluster, the regional SMILE entrepreneurial network of universities, the Transfer Network supported by the Leipziger Stiftung für Innovation und Technologietransfer (Leipzig Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer) and our new CASiM research center at HHL. Another example is how we broke new ground in our cooperation with the Fraunhofer-Zentrum für Mittel- und Osteuropa MOEZ (Fraunhofer Center for Central and Eastern Europe) when appointing a new holder of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Junior Professorship for International Management with a German-Polish focus. Moreover, the close collaboration with the Wittenberg Center for Global Ethics is of vital importance for our understanding of leadership geared to responsibility and sustainability."

The quality-oriented expansion of HHL must be accompanied by a widening of the business school's financial foundation. Consequently, the new chairs and junior professorships are all financed by additional funds from third parties and long-standing supporters of HHL have decided to continue their commitment in the future. Prof. Dr. Pinkwart says: "The total number of supporters has already doubled over the past two years. There will be other important partners joining this circle this year. Additionally, our alumni have continued to extend their commitment in the various bodies and funding organizations of HHL as well as in student recruitment and arranging field projects and career options for our graduates."

Prof. Dr. Pinkwart comments on the future funding of HHL: "Our shareholders, the Leipzig region and the Free State of Saxony support the only private university in the new federal states in various ways for which we are very grateful. The additional space, which the Free State of Saxony has kindly grated us on the Jahnallee education campus in order to meet our needs, is of particular importance for HHL's future growth. The main contribution, however, comes from the students themselves through their tuition fees. With its high proportion of international students, HHL is one of the few exporters of educational services, therefore contributing to the creation of value in the form of jobs and tax revenue for the Leipzig economy."

*** HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management

HHL is a university-level institution and ranks amongst the leading international Business Schools. The goal of the longest standing business school in German-speaking Europe is to educate effective, responsible and entrepreneurially minded leaders. In addition to HHL's international focus the combination of theory and practice plays a key role. HHL stands out for its excellent teaching, its clear research focus, its effective knowledge transfer into practice as well as its outstanding student services. The school offers an 24-month full-time als well as part-time Master program in Management leading to the degree Master of Science (M.Sc.) and also an 18 month Global Executive MBA.HHL's program is complemented by the two-year Euro*MBA-Program, a program based on e-learning (electronically supported learning). A three-year doctoral program, which can be studied part-time as well, completes HHL's courses of study. The department of Executive Education offers company specific and open training programs for advanced education for specialist and leading positions. HHL received the accreditation of AACSB International in April 2004 and was the first German private school to be re-accredited in April 2009. http://www.hhl.de

Further informationen:

http://www.hhl.de/115years/Andreas-Pinkwart/
http://www.hhl.de/115years
http://www.hhl.de