Finalist

Triple Helix Collaboration of the Year (at least 2 triple helix actors) Award

Gruendermotor - Next Generation Mittelstand

Finalist of the Triple Helix Collaboration of the Year (at least 2 triple helix actors) Award

"Next Generation Mittelstand"


Engage on social media

Have a say and vote for your favorite entries


Registered vote
500 points per vote
Provide your email address and click on "vote". You will then receive an email that enables you to verify your vote by clicking on a link.

 
Social media vote
1500 points per (re)tweet
Tweet or retweet using the following two hashtags:
#ACEEU_Awards
#2022EU_Entry523

Live voting at Awards Ceremony
7500 points per vote
Watch the Awards Ceremony online and vote live for your favorite entry. Register here to receive the streaming link.

Summary

The gruendermotor is a Public-Private Partnership with a hybrid governance model, in order to capture Value for both the academic as well as the corporate world. With this the platform model can serve and understand the different stakeholders to connect them around the Start-up’s which are always at the Centre of all activities. The uniqueness lies within the decentralized ecosystem approach. Unlike the classic Start-up Lighthouses such as the Silicon Valley, Shenzhen, Berlin, Paris or Munich, the gruendermotor takes on the challenge to create a win-win dynamic in a fragmented ecosystem. Such ecosystems are more difficult to coordinate but in the long-term offer more diversity and a greater potential. Therefore, the gruendermotor strengthens local initiatives, supports over regional collaboration and uses modern semi-automated data fusion approaches to make Baden-Württemberg to a new kind of start-up ecosystem.

Key People


Dr. Eric Heintze
Gruendermotor Public Lead
Institute of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Science ,  University of Stuttgart



Prof. Dr. Alexander Brem
Professor
Institute of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Science,  University of Stuttgart



Adrian Thoma
CEO
Gründermotor GmbH & Co. KG,  Gründermotor GmbH & Co. KG



June Nardiello
Gründermotor ASAP Plattform
ASAP BW,  University of Media Science



Prof. Nils Hoegsdal
Head of Innovation
Rectorate,  University of Media Science



Dr. Helmut Schelling
Visonary
Founder,  Vector Stiftung



Kurt Michael Stoll
supervisory board
Family Office,  Festo GmbH



Dr. Tim Gegg
Venture Manager
STIHL Ventures,  STIHL GmbH


Acknowledgements

Ministry of Art, Research and Culture, Baden-Wuertemberg
Ministry of Economics, Labor and Tourism, Baden-Württemberg
State Ministry, Baden-Wuertemberg

Images

Gruendermotor Stakeholders

Gründermotor Plattform

Dr. Eric Heintze

IMPACT STORY

Impacting lifes

The gruendermotor flagship program “Meisterklasse” has the goal to support selected startups from our academic partners and matching them with corporates and investors in order to create growth oriented “Wachstumsunternehmen”. The main challenge in growth is usually the mindset of the founder. So, when the original founder of “Markt Pilot” participated in the program he was a great salesman with a good idea. Due to the mentoring by experienced founders, with the Feedback from the corporate partners and by sparring with investors from our network, Tobi was able to take his knowledge from the University of Esslingen and create a company with now 60+ people and a new office in the USA. Still growing, “Markt Pilot” is one success story which started in the batch of 2019.since then many more Success stories have been started and we can not wait to tell about them.

LEARNINGS

Lessons learned

There has been a lot of advice around on how to run platforms and manage agile distributed teams. The gruendermotor is also run as a decentralized organisation and as a Start-up. We do not want compare ourselves to other. We much more want to be better than our own yesterday and continually improve the ecosystem for Start-up’s. Being founders ourselves helps us to value speed and keep learning in an iterative way. Working in a public as well as private value chain needs a high level of trust and understanding for each other. So even such a grand initiative with many players need an inner circle of trust with a common mission. So, no rule, contract or frameworks can replace trust and a common mission, in order to change the world together.

FUTURE PLANS

What's coming?

We want to grow the initiative and start raising a new Venture Fund for Baden-Wuerttemberg. We also want to inform and push politics in order to strengthen the start-up support within the Universities and the already existing infrastructure to establish continuity. For this we want to democratize the gruendermotor Public site with a committee based on ambassadors from the different university regional hubs. Coordination the over regional work in topic-based cluster shall help to bring together industry, start-ups and academia around certain topics to develop novel solution for our society.


KEY STATISTICS

24

Universities in Baden-Wuerttemberg

18

Corporate “Mittelstand” Partner

44

Ecosystem Partner in Baden-Wuerttemberg

78

Investment Partner

600+

Start-up’s and Start-up-projects supported since 2019

2024 © ACEEU. All rights reserved.