Networks to carry ideas
Through practical trainings focused on delivering our workshop content, we support our academic partners by making entrepreneurial ideas visible, encouraging exchange, and sustainably driving innovation in science.
TRAIN-THE-TRAINER
Train Tomorrow’s Sciencepreneurs!
Become a certified YES-Trainer – in our free, four-month training programme for staff from start-up centres and graduate schools. In interactive in-person and online sessions, you will learn how to deliver Design Thinking and practical workshop methods tailored to your audience. Together with 20 peers and experienced facilitators, you will reflect on your role, enhance your personal and methodological skills, and, upon successful completion, receive a certificate of participation along with access to high-quality workshop materials.
Structure of the Train-the-Trainer Programme
- Entrepreneurship for PhDs & Postdocs
- Design Thinking: Empathy, User Research, Protoyping
- Working on a challenge in a team
- Reflection on own roles
- Getting to know the basics of YES workshops
- Deep diving into the workshop concepts and content
- Preparing specific modules as a team
- Presenting, moderating and facilitating a workshop sequences
- Body, voice and pitch training
- Practicing on-site facilitation
- Transfer to own work context
- Next steps as a YES trainer
Upcoming Dates
The application phase for this year is already closed. If you have any questions or are interested in future calls for applications, please get in touch with Katharina Rosin and Ilaria Maggi.
Contacts
TRAINER GALLERY
Our Certified Trainers!
TU Dortmund
Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische Universität Kaiserslautern-Landau
KOALA NRW
Technische Universität Dortmund
Universität Potsdam
Universität Koblenz
Gateway Exzellenz Start-up Center der Universität zu Köln
Technische Universität München
Universität Potsdam
Universität Koblenz
Forschungszentrum Jülich
Hochschule Coburg, Referat für Transfer und Entrepreneurship
DBFZ
Universität der Bundeswehr München
Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT)
Eberhard Karls Universität
Deutsche Sporthochschule Köln
Charité BIH Innovation
CURRICULUM
Customisable Workshops for your Target Group
Our modular offer provides practical insights and allows for the flexible design of workshops tailored to your goals. Choose from two categories: Career & Empowerment and Ideas & Methods. Both can be booked individually or in combination to create bespoke workshops for your audience.
With our flexible modular toolkit, you can assemble the content to suit your exact needs – whether for shorter sessions or more extensive workshops. Our online modules last between 2.5 and 3 hours and can be adapted for both virtual and in-person events. You’re also welcome to choose from our best practice combinations.
If you’d like to learn more about the workshop options, feel free to get in touch. You’ll find our partner management contacts at the bottom of this page.
Our Module Offering
Career & Empowerment
Exploring entrepreneurial skills, mindsets and career paths
Modules
- Introduction to working in teams
- Agility and self-organised teams (VUCA)
- Role model Q&A with a team expert
- Introduction to the innovator’s skill set
- Reflection on one’s own skill set
- Discovering the entrepreneurial superpowers within the group
- Deep dive into the concept of social entrepreneurship
- Getting to know different dimensions and examples of social business models
- Brainstorming about potential social business cases
- Exchanging with and learning from role models
- Reflection about one’s own perspectives and mindset
- Getting to know the concept of empathy in human-centred design
- Practising a change of perspective
- Assessing the potential of empathy in one’s research/work environment
- Reflection about the potential of one’s own research topic/idea
- Assessing potential through identifying users/stakeholders
- Developing or extending potential use cases based on one’s research & network
- Learn about the golden circle and the concepts of purpose and impact
- Reflect on the WHY behind your research work
- Think about potential areas of impact that your research can contribute to
- Learn about useful mindsets to cope with stressful situations
- Practise creating room for positive perspectives
- Develop resilience strategies that suit your needs
- Reach clarity and confidence for yourself on the subject of founding
- Reflect on your own resources and potential support
- Get inspired by female founder personalities
- Understand what conflicts stand for and how they can be useful.
- Understand the role of empathy and a change of perspective in conflict situations.
- Get to know strategies for dealing with conflicts and try out.
- Breaking the entrepreneurial stereotype
- Reflecting on one’s own potential entrepreneurial journey
- Exchanging with and learn from entrepreneurs
- Learning about startup-services and their support programmes
Ideas & Methods
Discovering user-centric methods to yield ideas and develop them further
Modules
- Understanding a problem as a basis for innovative ideation
- Getting to know different brainstorming methods and test them
- Generating, evaluating, and selecting ideas
- Introduction to building a convincing pitch
- Creating & practising one’s own pitch
- Pitch in front of an expert jury
- Learn and reflect on relevant future trends in a specific field (STEEP trend & key factor analysis)
- Discover possible futures that are worth being prepared for
- Develop a future scenario that you would like to make a reality
- Introduction to rapid prototyping
- Defining the critical function of an idea
- Building a prototype and presenting it
- Understanding the problem space: Getting to know the user and building empathy
- Finding human-centred solutions: Identifying the problem, developing a solution, assessing the ideas
- Prototyping & testing: Building a prototype and testing the critical function
- Introduction to business modeling vs. business planning; getting to know the Business Model Canvas
- Hands-on working with the elements of the Business Model Canvas
- Reflection and exchange on how to apply the tool outside the workshop
- Get to know the basics of storytelling and storytelling frameworks
- Create the protagonist of your story and define your impact
- Learn techniques of captivative storytelling
- Write and narrate your own story
Best Practices
Onsight
8 h
- Teamwork: Design Thinking Challenge
- Understanding the problem: Empathy & user research
8 h
- Generating & choosing ideas
- Trying out brainstorming methods
- Teamwork: Building Prototypes
- Introduction to testing & iteration
“It was amazing to see how a business idea could be created from scratch – in just two days. The design thinking tools allowed for tangible and immediate results creating a more mature idea that has already undergone a series of short real-world tests.”
Participant in the “From PhD to Innovator” workshop in Oldenburg
21.—22.03.2022
Online
5.5 h
- Reflection about the potential of one’s own research topic/idea
- Assessing potential through identifying users/stakeholders
- Developing or extending potential use cases based on one’s research & network
5.5 h
“The programme was very well structured with a perfect balance between learning moments as well as elaboration of the newly acquired concepts – alone and in groups.”
Participant in the “From PhD to Innovator” workshop
13.—14.01.2022
Contacts
Kathrin Mengis
Partnermanagement und Training & Curriculum
