WHU Comes in First in “Entrepreneurship Teaching”

In the 2022 edition of the renowned MBA Rankings published by The Financial Times, WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management has placed remarkably high in the “Best for Entrepreneurship Teaching” sub-category, coming in first among all German universities. That success can also be seen when expanding the scope to the rest of the globe, with WHU ranking at #3 in Europe and #8 worldwide. The rankings are based on responses from alumni who participated in a survey sent by The Financial Times.

These outstanding results are in large part due to the extensive development of the entrepreneurship programs, practice-oriented pedagogy, and efforts made by the WHU Entrepreneurship Center. And, of course, one cannot forget the important role played by the WHU student body as well as the WHU alumni association In Praxi in stimulating the entrepreneurial spirit. In response to this recognition, Professor Dries Faems, Academic Co-Director of the WHU Entrepreneurship Center stated, “This result is impressive, even when stacked up against top universities such as Stanford or MIT. We continue to strive toward building—and expanding—a comprehensive entrepreneurial ecosystem.”

Analyses performed by the venture capital firm Antler show that this ecosystem at WHU, alongside the programs centered around entrepreneurship, acts as an excellent foundation for both alumni and founders. Antler’s “Unicorn founder roadmap” concludes that, with specific regards to start-up companies, two leading institutions in Germany account for more than a quarter of all unicorn founders from the DACH region over the past 20 years: WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management and the Technical University of Munich (TUM). Calculations performed by TUM equally underpin these findings, as seen in their report Benchmarking der Entrepreneurship Performance deutscher Hochschulen (“Benchmarking of the Entrepreneurship Performance of German Universities”): Relative to the size of the student body, WHU produces the most start-ups in all of Germany.

Detailed results of the “FT MBA 2022 ranking: best for entrepreneurship teaching” can be found here.