You’ve been Professor for Entrepreneurial Behaviour at the University of Bonn for about a year now. What exactly does your work entail?
My students get to take a close look at the topics of self-employment, entrepreneurship and starting a business. My courses give them the opportunity to devise their own business ideas and models and work on them in a really practical way. I support them through this process, which has already produced some impressive projects, and work closely with the enaCom Transfer Center based at the University of Bonn. The center supports them with their start-up ventures and opens doors to them. In my courses, we also explore the question of why individuals become entrepreneurs. What motivates them? What skills do they need? And, above all else, how do they shape their entrepreneurial journey? These are all questions we tackle.
Have any of your students’ ideas become actual businesses yet?
Yes, and I’m delighted about it! In the 2024 summer semester, Kathrin Schumilin worked on an entrepreneurial approach to combating food waste together with some of the other young ladies taking my Sustainable Entrepreneurship & Venturing master’s module. Her start-up, called “Mangolade,” has now secured her second place at the Female Innovation Award 2025. The underlying idea is that she turns mango seeds into an alternative to cocoa butter, a key ingredient in chocolate. This fantastic example is encouraging me to go even further in offering my courses to all the faculties, because innovation is born out of diversity. And we’ll only succeed in advancing and driving entrepreneurship at the University of Bonn if we all pull together. We’ve already taken the first step: in the 2024/2025 winter semester, I launched a module in Entrepreneurship and Business Management, which is open to bachelor’s students from other faculties as well. It’s attracted great interest: I had 100 people register right there and then.
What do students learn in one of these inter-faculty modules?
In my lectures, I teach them the basics of entrepreneurship and also look at sustainable business strategies. Because I set great store by having specific examples from the real world, I invite everyone—from founders of start-ups and scale-ups to experts from large corporations—to give keynote lectures. Thus my students get first-hand insights into all the things that go into setting up a company. In the next step, we explore the growth and maturity phases, i.e. all the stages that a business can go through. But we also go on field trips and take a look behind the scenes at an urban mushroom farm, for instance, to learn more about its processes and chat to the founders.
Who can already take this module at the University of Bonn?
The module is currently open to students in the Faculty of Agricultural, Nutritional, and Engineering Sciences as well as those studying computer science, cyber security, geography, geosciences or economics. Some faculties are still wrestling with structural challenges but have likewise shown great interest. In this week alone, I’ve once again been holding discussions with several colleagues from these faculties. We’re now working toward being able to offer the module to their students too in the 2025/2026 winter semester. Honestly, I’m absolutely thrilled with everything that we’ve set in train since I've been here.
What’s next on your list?
During the Dies Academicus, for example, we ran a workshop whose title translates as “Impropreneurship—where creative spontaneity meets entrepreneurial spirit.” The entrepreneurial mindset has a lot in common with improvisational theater. Participants get the chance to learn relevant skills that are also important for start-up entrepreneurs, such as flexibility, creativity, teamwork, courage and spontaneity—but also a focus on your audience, which in the figurative sense can also be understood as focusing on your target group. We try to impart entrepreneurial skills through creative formats, if you like. I’ll also be doing a lecture on “From beans to business” for the Children’s University, where I’ll talk about some of the business models in the chocolate industry.
What aspects are particularly important to you when teaching new skills?
As far as I’m concerned, acquiring transformative skills is key, which include things like critical thinking, reflection, empathy, resilience and the ability to cooperate. These skills are vital not only for the students’ personal success but also for overcoming global challenges, which entrepreneurs are faced with every single day. The skills thus provide the foundations you need to be able to take responsibility, understand complex interrelationships and play an active role in helping to devise lasting solutions. This is what makes transfer possible: rather than remaining abstract for ever, the knowledge generated through research has to find a way to be applied in practice. This is why, on my courses, I always combine teaching knowledge transfer skills with developing the competences needed for a sustainable transformation of society.
We’re living in increasingly uncertain times. What impact is that having on students who are taking your courses and maybe toying with the idea of starting their own business?
Of course, that’s something I can only guess at. However, we ran a survey of the students who registered for my inter-faculty Entrepreneurship and Business Management module, because we wanted to find out what was motivating them to sign up and what they were looking for in general. The most common response we got was that they were curious about the topic and interested in it as a basic principle. Many people answered with the entirely traditional “interest in starting a business,” while a few wrote that they wanted to “buy a Porsche” one day. I also remember the reply we received from one particular student, who was pursuing the “dream of working for myself.” I’d say that was a strong statement. I think there’s definitely many young people who are looking for a secure job in these uncertain times. But there are also a great many among them who want to have a lot of freedoms very quickly. Although entrepreneurship can’t meet this need for security, it definitely checks the “freedom” and “autonomy” boxes. So self-employment can be an attractive career path, perhaps for the younger generation in particular.
In May 2024, you received the Nicolaus August Otto Award, which honors people for their pioneering spirit. To what extent are you inspired by the man who gave his name to the prize?
Nikolaus August Otto built the world’s first engine factory about 160 years ago. He was an impressive human being and a businessman and inventor who had the courage to follow his dreams and didn’t let setbacks put him off. These are precisely the skills that I focus on in my teaching and that I’d also like my students to develop, because pioneers aren’t born, they’re made. Because I’m a professor at the only university-level faculty of agricultural, nutritional and engineering sciences in the whole of North Rhine-Westphalia, many of my students will end up working in the agriculture or food industry. Both sectors are facing major change, because the systems they run on are undergoing a transformation toward cultivation and processing methods that are more sustainable, more digital, kinder on the environment and more conducive to preserving biodiversity. I have no doubt that our students will go on to make an important contribution to the development of suitable solutions to these environmental and social challenges. Our job at the University of Bonn is to help give them the knowledge and skills they’ll need for this.
What current trends and developments are playing a big role in agriculture at the moment?
Shrinking farm numbers and transferring ownership of them are two of the hot topics right now. In Lower Saxony, farmers are being paid to stop breeding pigs, a development that start-up entrepreneurs are taking advantage of. For example, one of the guest speakers in my lectures will be growing hemp on a former farm in the future. The benefit of this is that farms like these already have the necessary infrastructure in place, such as solar panels, ventilation systems and much more besides. This makes them particularly attractive prospects for being taken over by other industries and sectors.
Can you see yourself starting a business?
My mum worked for herself, my husband works for himself, but I belong at university. When I was still at Grundschule, I dressed up as a professor—as Albert Einstein, in fact—for Carnival. When I heard about my appointment at the University of Bonn, I took a photo of myself in this costume to my parents and asked them “Well, who can you see there? And what am I now?” Initially, they looked at me somewhat perplexed, until I told them: “I used to have to disguise myself, but I don’t have to do that anymore as of today.” Then they understood. Their and my joy in this beautiful moment is something I’ll never forget.
The interview was conducted by Evelyn Stolberg.
