On September 6, twenty university professors, including WHU's Adjunct Professor Malte Brettel, were honored by the German UNIPRENEURS initiative for their outstanding contribution to the founding of university spin-offs and for their commitment to entrepreneurship. Professor Brettel holds the Chair of Entrepreneurship II at WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management, as well as the Chair of Business Administration for Engineers and Natural Scientists and the Center for Entrepreneurship at RWTH Aachen. As founder of the online book distributor JustBooks, he has extensive practical experience. "I am delighted that today, as a group of several entrepreneurship chairs, we are advancing the topic of entrepreneurship at WHU," he said at the award ceremony.
Today, about a quarter of all German start-ups have their roots at universities. "The number of WHU graduates who have been very successful in the start-up scene in recent decades is impressive," explained Maximilian Eckel, Managing Director of the WHU Entrepreneurship Center. "Being a WHU alumnus himself, Malte plays a special role for our entrepreneurship ecosystem. We are grateful that, as a professor, he shares his experience with our students and builds bridges between the management experts at WHU and the engineers at RWTH. After all, when a start-up is founded, there is a need for both business and technical acumen."
With 700 nominations suggested by a variety of founders, the UNIPRENEURS Award is the most prolific honor for the promotion of entrepreneurship in higher education and research. The special significance of this year's ceremony, held at the Allianz Forum at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, was also underscored by the presence of Bettina Stark-Watzinger, Federal Minister of Education and Research, and Dr. Anna Christmann, Commissioner for Digital Economy and Start-Ups at the Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection.
The central aim of UNIPRENEURS is to promote entrepreneurship at German universities in order to fully realize the potential of the research landscape, concerning both patents and publications. The UNIPRENEURS award also aims to raise public awareness of the role that universities play in Germany's startup landscape. To this end, UNIPRENEURS works with partner organizations, such as the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft, the Start-up-Verband, Bitkom, and AddedVal.io.
For information on the other 2023 UNIPRENEURS awardees, please see the UNIPRENEURS press release.