HHL Named Germany's Best Entrepreneurial University

[HHL gGmbH - 20.11.2013] HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management received further acknowledgement as a hotbed for entrepreneurs. While the Financial Times has named the first business school established in Germany as the worldwide leader in the field of entrepreneurship for years, HHL now reached first place in the 2013 Start-up Radar ranking published by the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft (Founder's Association for German Science) encompassing all business schools and universities with up to 5,000 students. HHL, a state-recognized private university, performs equally well in the four fields of the Start-up Radar (entrepreneurial establishment, awareness, support and activities), making it a role model for other universities. The new Start-up Radar of the Stifterverband shows how well universities support students and researchers in their entrepreneurial activities. It illustrates the various strategies and success factors in entrepreneurship facilitation in a comprehensive and comparative fashion and offers recommendations for politics and universities. The Stifterverband works with the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology to give a vital impetus for the further development of entrepreneurship facilitation at universities.

Entrepreneurial activities well-established at HHL

HHL uses the facilitation of entrepreneurial activities as an important profiling characteristic for the school. The strong roots and high relevance of the topics are shown by the fact that entrepreneurial thinking is very much emphasized in HHL's mission statement. HHL lives and breathes the entrepreneurial spirit in all fields - research, teaching and administration. Additionally, the topic of entrepreneurship has been explicitly assigned to the Dean's Office - Prof. Dr. Andreas Pinkwart himself holds one of three chairs focusing on entrepreneurship.

"The honors granted us by the Stifterverband bring us two perspectives. On the one hand, we see them as an acknowledgement of our innovate125 HHL Future Concept whose core is the entrepreneurial graduate business school. On the other, it is important for the new federal states and Germany as a whole that there are universities with an entrepreneurship focus. With HHL, the new federal states have an excellent university which is number one within its segment for company foundations. These start-ups are of vital importance as they promote growth and employment," says HHL Dean Prof. Dr. Andreas Pinkwart.

The stakeholders in entrepreneurship facilitation at HHL are the three entrepreneurship-oriented chairs, the accelerate@HHL student initiative as well as Verein für Innovation, Existenzgründung und Wachstum an der Handelshochschule Leipzig e.V. (VIEW, Association for Innovation, Business Start-up and Growth at HHL).

The accelerate@HHL student initiative aims to establish contact amongst students interested in starting a business and successful (HHL) entrepreneurs from various industries. For this purpose, it organizes, among other things, a start-up conference.

The VIEW association focuses on the promotion of science and research in the fields of innovation, business start-up and growth. VIEW considers itself a platform for bundling regional activities in this area and establishing a professional network of mentors. Some of the activities organized by VIEW are regular start-up workshops with guest speakers from science and practice as well as field projects during which student teams led by a chair collaborate with start-up founders and examine their business idea for marketability.

One important aspect of entrepreneurship facilitation at HHL is the involvement of former students in these activities. First, the alumni are included by giving presentations and joining the Start-up Career Fair, which takes place every six months. On top of that, the alumni network specifically approaches company founders. The important role that the alumni play in the HHL students' start-up projects is also reflected by their high presence in the initiation of the 18 planned start-ups (3.8 per 100 students) and 13 actual start-ups (2.7 per 100 students) mentored in 2012.

About the Start-up Radar

The Start-up Radar was first published in 2013 and will be issued every year. It will be presented by the Stifterverband in cooperation with the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology on November 20, 2013 during the Gründerwoche (Start-up Week) in Berlin. The authors asked all state-recognized universities what framework conditions and incentives exist for students to start a company after graduation, how the universities supported them in this venture and what kind of organizational structures, guidance and consultancy services there were locally. http://www.gruendungsradar.de

HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management as a hotbed for entrepreneurs

With over 130 start-ups by HHL alumni over the past fifteen years, Germany's top address for young managers has also developed into an incubator for company creation. Well-known examples are Gollmann Kommissionierungssysteme, Mister Spex, SunCoal Industries - the winner of the Founder's Prize awarded by WirtschaftsWoche magazine - or Leipzig-based companies Spreadshirt and billigflieger.de. The founders' entrepreneurial commitment has created more than 2,500 jobs already, over 1,100 of which are located in the Leipzig region alone. HHL was voted among the top 20 start-up business schools in Germany in the second round of the "EXIST Gründungskultur - Die Gründerhochschule" start-up competition by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology last year. Just as in 2011, HHL managed to score the top position internationally for its entrepreneurship training in the Master in Management Ranking by the Financial Times in 2012. http://www.hhl.de/entrepreneurialgraduateschool/