Entrepreneurial Skills Charter signed

How do you arouse interest in entrepreneurial thinking in students? What educational measures can universities use to impart expertise and skills that are helpful in successfully starting or managing a business? The Stifterverband's "Entrepreneurial Skills Charter" [de] has developed eleven strategies that seek to answer questions like this, and also function as a guide for teachers. The University of Stuttgart was involved in the preparation and is the first signatory.

Detailing the University of Stuttgart’s commitment to the charter, Professor Peter Middendorf, Vice Rector for Knowledge and Technology Transfer, says, “With its start-up-oriented transfer strategy, the University of Stuttgart has placed a special focus on entrepreneurship. An important aspect of this is teaching the relevant skills, for which the Stifterverband's Entrepreneurial Skills Charter provides very well-coordinated and concise guidelines for the German university system.”

"It is an excellent initiative from the Stifterverband to develop basic goals for entrepreneurship education in Germany. The development of standards in entrepreneurship education will help ensure even better cooperation across universities. The University of Stuttgart, was happy to participate and contribute its know-how," reports Professor Alexander Brem from the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Science. 

At the Stifterverband's "Entrepreneurial Skills" support network, the Dieter Schwarz Foundation, and Campus Founders, in cooperation with Allianz SE, university representatives spent several months jointly developing solutions and approaches focusing on how entrepreneurial skills can be structurally integrated into universities as transversal or future-oriented skills.

Based on the challenges identified by the more than 50 participants, eleven strategies for the development of successful, sustainable entrepreneurship education were developed and supplemented in a co-creative process by a broad circle of experts. These serve as a guide to help teachers and university administrators design their entrepreneurship education formats.

1. Entrepreneurship education encompasses a wide range of skills relevant to the future.
2. Entrepreneurship education requires impact-oriented and data-based scientific monitoring.
3. Entrepreneurship Education is practical, evidence-based and uses comprehensive methods.
4. Entrepreneurship education focuses on the needs of the target group.
5. Entrepreneurship education must be developed further based on specific subjects.
6. Entrepreneurship education must be comprehensively anchored in the organizational structure.
7. Entrepreneurship education must be developed at the interface between transfer, research, start-up services and business.
8. Entrepreneurship education requires a cultural change at universities.
9. Entrepreneurship education must be structurally anchored in the curriculum.
10. Entrepreneurship education is interdisciplinary and collaborative.
11. Entrepreneurship Education means educating about social responsibility, sustainability and future viability.