HNEE opens StartupLab

With more than 230 square metres of new space in Eberswalde's city centre, the StartupLab at Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development (HNEE) offers space for creative and innovative minds who want to set up their own company. The official inauguration of the StartupLab took place on 8 September 2022. Partners and employees of HNEE took the opportunity to visit the premises.

The StartupLab is a central contact point and open meeting place for all those interested in starting a business at the university. The head of the HNEE start-up centre, Dr Robert Schmidt, welcomed the guests: "After many months of development work, I am very pleased that the StartupLab is finally taking off and would like to thank my entire team for their great support during this time."

HNEE President Prof Dr Matthias Barth is impressed by the creative space that has been created: "The StartupLab is an important driver and lever for the sustainability transformation. We need precisely these kinds of spaces to bring together and support creative players."

Mayor Götz Herrmann was among the invited guests: "The Startup Lab provides HNEE students and graduates with an affinity for start-ups with an excellent place to share and develop their ideas. The Startup Lab builds on Eberswalde's rich tradition of innovation and gives it a new chapter with new impetus. This impetus, combined with a strong entrepreneurial spirit and courage, paves the way for future-oriented and innovative developments."

With the rented space, the StartupLab not only provides founders with a creative working environment. "The StartupLab is more than just another working environment. In collaboration with regional practice partners, new research and start-up spaces are being created that promote creativity and innovation. The university's start-up-supporting structures will thus become better networked regionally and more practical. New decentralised innovation locations make it possible to pursue start-up activities in the region in suitable creative environments with direct contact to practice," says the deputy head of HNEE's start-up centre.

As before, university members are supported by the university's start-up centre with individual advice on their start-up ideas. In addition, they can now also try them out in practice in a working environment designed for this purpose both inside and outside HNEE.

The project is designed to strengthen entrepreneurship education, i.e. to attract and support potential company founders at the university while they are still studying. The aim is to sustainably integrate start-up-promoting structures into the university's research and teaching activities. The aim is to achieve interdisciplinary exchange between members of the university.

The project will be funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministeriums für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF) over the next four years.

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