Pinkwart currently holds the Chair of Innovation and Technology Management at Dresden University of Technology (TU Dresden) and is Director of its new Excellence Center for Innovation, Transfer and Entrepreneurship TUD|excite (until June 30). In Bonn, he will hold the Senior Professorship for Strategic Entrepreneurship on a part-time basis and work closely with Professor Günter Mayer, the Rectorate’s Transfer Officer, to inject fresh momentum into furthering the development of the University’s transfer activities. The aims are to keep on expanding the existing structures, launch new partnerships and bring about additional links and projects together with partners from business, industry, technology and society.
Harnessing potential for innovation
“Transfer is a key pillar of our Excellence Strategy, which we are using to unlock the innovative potential of research for the benefit of business, industry, technology and society,” says Rector Professor Michael Hoch. “In Professor Pinkwart, we’ve recruited an exceptional individual who is more synonymous with connecting up research, entrepreneurship and innovation than perhaps anyone else.” The Rector believes that Pinkwart’s experience, network and sheer creative force will help to boost the transfer mindset at the University of Bonn, instigate new partnerships and thus further increase the impact of our research on business, industry and society. “As a University of Excellence heading into the world’s top 50, we don’t just need the best minds for our research—the transfer of findings into day-to-day use also requires the best available expertise, and Andreas Pinkwart is going to make all the difference here with his unique background and skillset.”
Spreading the entrepreneurial spirit
Pinkwart will also hone the University of Bonn’s entrepreneurship profile in research and teaching. As a member of the Institute for Entrepreneurship in the Faculty of Agricultural, Nutritional, and Engineering Sciences, he will help to fire the University’s entrepreneurial spirit even further by linking transfer activities closely with research and teaching. Thus the University of Bonn is building on the successful growth of the Transfer Center enaCom, which over the past few years has brought together key services for business formation, innovation and knowledge transfer and has taken transfer at the University to a whole new level.
Fresh ideas for the transfer activities of tomorrow
Says Pinkwart: “The University of Bonn has one of the strongest track records in research of any university in Europe and is ideally placed to meld scientific excellence with innovation, entrepreneurship and societal impact. I’m delighted that, alongside my new main job as a member of the Executive Board of the Bertelsmann Stiftung in Gütersloh, I’ll be returning to my academic roots and inspiring fresh ideas for future transfer between the worlds of research, business, industry, technology and society in lockstep with the Rectorate, the transfer officers and the faculties.” The Bertelsmann Stiftung’s Board of Trustees has appointed Pinkwart a member of its Executive Board with effect from July 1, 2026.
Born in 1960, Andreas Pinkwart first trained as a banker before studying economics and business administration at the Universities of Münster and Bonn. He obtained his doctorate at the University of Bonn in 1991 with a thesis on chaos and corporate crisis, graduating summa cum laude. This was followed by a number of professorships, including in Düsseldorf, Siegen, Leipzig and Dresden. He was Chancellor of HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management and held its Stiftungsfonds Deutsche Bank Chair of Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship from 2011 to 2017.
Pinkwart boasts extensive experience in the fields of politics, research management and promoting innovation. He has been Minister for Innovation, Science, Research and Technology and Deputy State Premier (2005–2010) and Minister for Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digitalization and Energy (2017–2022) of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) as well as serving as a member of the German Bundestag, the Bundesrat and the NRW state parliament.
Pinkwart has won several awards for his activities where research, business, industry and innovation meet, including the Deutscher Elite-Mittelstandspreis for services to SMEs, the German Startup Award and the Innovation in Academia Award for Science and Business presented by the University of Kent in the UK.