Stimulating cultural change in academia

We want to open up new career perspectives for highly qualified, early-career researchers and channel their expert knowledge into entrepreneurial endeavours. Through learning methods such as Design Thinking, Young Entrepreneurs in Science encourages participants to discover and share their inherent competencies and potential. The involvement of startup founders and intrapreneurs of innovation-oriented companies gives participants realistic and stimulating insights into the chances and challenges of entrepreneurial activity.

Entrepreneurial thinking does not start with a business plan. We aim for a more playful approach by asking you: How much startup is in your PhD?

We are changing the culture in academia

We believe that all of Germany’s 200,000 doctoral candidates have the potential to become entrepreneurs. The skillsets and key qualifications required to obtain a PhD are similar to that of an entrepreneur: Working with passion on a topic, finding solutions for problems and promoting ideas in front of a highly critical audience. But what if they have not yet had the opportunity to reflect on their expertise from an entrepreneurial point of view? What if their academic environment is not yet, or only minimally shaped by entrepreneurial spirit?

Young Entrepreneurs in Science’s vision: we want to stimulate cultural change towards more decisiveness and entrepreneurial desire among doctoral candidates, postdocs, and their supervisors, thus, in academia as a whole.

We promote science through community and exchange

Young Entreprneurs in Science is part of and enabled by the Falling Walls Foundation in Berlin, initiated in 2017 by the chairman of the board of trustees, Prof. Dr Jürgen Mlynek. Falling Walls is a not-for-profit organisation that aims to communicate science and research to the public and to promote inter- and transdisciplinary exchange. Since 2009, the Falling Walls Conference brings together an international community of distinguished figures working in the realms of science, politics, business and culture, each year on the historical day of the fall of the Berlin Wall, 9 November. The programme of the Falling Walls Foundation further includes Falling Walls Venture, Falling Walls Lab, Falling Walls Circle and Falling Walls Engage, and the Berlin Science Week.

We connect the actors of Germany’s science and innovation landscapes

Young Entrepreneurs in Science promotes the creation and development of regional networks for entrepreneurship and innovation with the help of strong partnerships in academia and in business. Our company partners make themselves known among science talents of their region, promote their programmes for corporate entrepreneurship and therewith invigorate the environment of knowledge exchange and business development in which they are operating. Our university partners enhance their startup activity by motivating early-career researchers to move from Graduate School to academic startup and incubation units and thereby obtain a reputation as incubators for innovative startup ideas and excellent research transfer.

Our Advisory Board

• Prof. Dr. Jürgen Mlynek
• Dr. Nadine Diersch
• Prof. Dr. med. Silke Rickert-Sperling
• Dr. Matthias Zentgraf
• Steffen Terberl
• Prof. Dr. Dieter Jahn
• Tanja Golly
• Asmelash Teka Hadgu
• Prof. Dr. Katharina Hölzle
• Barbara Diehl
• Prof. Dr. Uwe Cantner
• Dr. Imke Rajamani
• Dr. Stephanie Dittmer
• Dr. Michael Plessmann

Our Academic Council

• Prof. Dr. Dietmar Harhoff
• Prof. Dr. Malte Brettel
• Prof. Dr. Nicola Breugst
• Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Franke
• Prof. Dr. Holger Patzelt
• Prof. Dr. Jelena Spanjol
• Prof. Dr. Michael Woywode