With the start of the new year, the WHU Incubator has been fully integrated into the WHU Entrepreneurship Center. Professor Dr. Dries Faems and Professor Dr. Christoph Hienerth, the academic co-directors of the Center of Entrepreneurship at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management, have taken over the leadership of the WHU Incubator from Professor Dr. Malte Brettel, adjunct professor at the Chair of Entrepreneurship II.
Over the last couple of years, there has been an ever-increasing entrepreneurial activity at WHU. Entrepreneurship was and is a core pillar of WHU’s identity, and with more programs to be developed and many more potential founders, activities are getting more manifold and complex. The WHU Entrepreneurship Center’s role is to align and coordinate all these activities and provide the best services for students, faculty, alumni and corporate partners.
It provides support and coaching to WHU students who have the ambition to start an entrepreneurial venture. Together with RWTH Aachen and InPraxi, the alumni organization of WHU, it also organizes regular roadshows that allow WHU entrepreneurs go get access to a rich network of investors. In this way, the WHU Incubator has contributed to the building of a highly successful entrepreneurial ecosystem at WHU. The recent Exit Monitor 2020, showing that WHU alumni are the most successful in generating exits for start-ups, is just one example of the unique strengths of this ecosystem.
The core objective of integrating the WHU Incubator into the WHU Entrepreneurship Center is to further leverage this entrepreneurial spirit at WHU. Gerrit McGowan, managing director of the WHU Entrepreneurship Center, will act as the core coordinator of the support activities at the incubator. Professor Faems and Professor Hienerth will be responsible for nurturing the flow of promising entrepreneurial ideas, which emerge in the educational activities, into the incubator. At the same time, the strong connection with WHU’s partner university RWTH Aachen will be continued, allowing students to get valuable support on technological challenges.