What ideas do students really care about?
Insights from the first 200 teams participating in an Academic Seed Accelerator Program.
At universities numerous startup ideas are generated by students every semester. One experience is that only a few students then take the next step towards starting a business which is the development and validation of the business model. Further analysis of the data shows that young women tend to be less likely than young men to take the next step.
One hypothesis for both observations is that it is that the next step in taking an idea forward is on one hand time-consuming, requiring support and is on the other had not formally "rewarded". The "rewards" are academic credits which means the work takes has to happen alongside studies without receiving ECTS. This appears to be a big loss of potential for startup activities as well as learning. The evaluation of a course in the third year of a Bachelor's program revealed that only 4 of 107 ideas generated in this class up to date over 12 semesters have actually been followed up.
Start-up BW ASAP is designed as a cohort-based, largely decentralized program in the form of a competition with a uniform, well-founded set of tools and methods, which is especially adapted to the colleges and universities in the state. The aim of the project is also helping to discover the most promising startup ideas at each university. ASAP stands for "Academic Sees Accelerator Program". The aim is a quick validation of the business model.
The program has shown how many ideas are being developed every semester within the state university system. It has received support from both the ministry of higher education as well as the ministry for economic development. It has allowed to systematically discover the ideas and to support the teams by finding suitable support in incubation programs (e.g. Gründermotor, Sandbox, Social Impact Lab and more) as well as direct support. The price money - provided as a direct support by the L-Bank (being the state's support bank) - has in several cases allowed to pay for a prototype. It appears that some "nudging" and support is all it takes to go for the next step.
Mitvortragende: Nardiello, June
Vortrag auf Veranstaltung: G-Forum
Veranstaltungsort: Karlsruhe
Datum: 27.09.2020 bis 02.10.2020
Autoren
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Prof.
Dr. Nils Högsdal
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