IESE: Building a Startup Ecosystem for Germany

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Five business leaders joined Christopher Zott recently to debate “Learning Big Time From Small Units,” how corporations and startups can leverage each other’s expertise to drive innovation and productivity in Germany. The event drew an audience of IESE alumni and other executives.

According to Matthias Schanze, Senior Director of Venture Technology at Siemens Technology to Business, who took part in the IESE Munich event, “We see the Germany of today – and tomorrow – with a high-tech ecosystem to rival Silicon Valley. It’s a question of creating an ecosystem. Germany is very different from Silicon Valley, but it is changing. I see today’s university graduates, and they have the ambition to change the world and to save the world. We have this talent and this drive. What we need to build now are clusters of high-tech companies, universities and money to drive the entire startup ecosystem.”

Thorsten Marquardt, Managing Director at E.ON: agile accelerator, another participant, comments, “Most companies already have entrepreneurs working within them. Managers need to learn how to identify – and activate – them. To do this, CEOs have to develop an entrepreneurial mindset and create an ecosystem and space for these ideas to grow.” More is needed in terms of changing mind-sets in order for Germany to become a high-tech hub. “We need entrepreneurs and startup founders to get better at story-telling. You compare the situation in the U.S. where startups can convince a venture capitalist to fund them in three minutes. Here we need get much better at pitching the potential of new ventures.”

For more information on IESE events and programs, visit their Web site.

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