“How to Become an Entrepreneur?” Fostering Entrepreneurial Thinking of Engineers

Start-ups, especially those with a focus on technical products or services, are known to be a key driver of innovation. Although engineering students are increasingly interested in founding and their start-ups are of considerable quality, Germany has a small number of new start-ups, as well as an equally low rate of innovation in the knowledge-based and high-technology sector compared to some other leading nations. Engineering students, which are most likely to found a tech related start-up seem to lack knowledge and incentives to start an autonomous venture. A survey of 109 engineering students, targeted this issue. It showed that only that 56,7% of the surveyed students could imagine establishing a start-up after completing their degree, but only 6% of the students actually plan to start a business, which was mostly due to the lack of preparation and the individual fear of failure. To face these challenges, the seminar “How to become an entrepreneur” is developed within the project ELLI 2. The extracurricular seminar provides students with skills they need to generate ideas, setting up a business plan and launch their business. Its program follows a two-pronged teaching approach. Theoretical frameworks as well as hands-on problem solving are integral parts of the learning experience to equip the students not only with knowledge, but with the ability of applying the acquired information. This paper outlines the approach of the developed seminar which is preparing students in an academic setting for applying their entrepreneurial knowledge.