Teaching entrepreneurial thinking and acting
With its entrepreneurship education, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf aims to awaken students' interest in the options of self-employment and founding a company and make them curious about the exciting challenges that a business start-up opens up.
Courses for students and scientists of all faculties
With knowledge about the evolution and management of new enterprises as well as input and experience reports taken from practice, the course offer aims to relay the basic application-oriented know-how required for a successful start-up and encourage participants to transform their own business idea into reality.
In the lecture “From the Idea to the Founding”, the business and legal fundamentals of a business start-up are conveyed as part of the Studium Universale. In addition, successful founders give helpful insights into practice and report on their individual experiences.
The aim of the course is to describe various financing instruments for owner-dominated companies and to analyse capital structure decisions. Students will also learn about the levers of working capital management. They will learn to distinguish between different forms of financial forecasting. Another topic is the creation of an integrated financial model. In addition, students gain comprehensive insight into the fund structures of venture capital and private equity companies. Another focus is on the distinction between different performance measures for venture capital and private equity and their advantages and disadvantages. Furthermore, students learn to analyse venture capital and private equity transactions in terms of due diligence, investment structuring, the support phase and exit options.
In this seminar, students become founders. Based on their own ideas, student teams learn to found a new company in practical steps. On the basis of market, customer demand and competition analyzes, students develop their own product over the course of the semester, which they test on customers by designing a suitable marketing strategy. At the end of the seminar, students try to convince relevant interest groups of their company through an investor pitch.
With a strategic business start-up game, the typical phases of a business start-up are mapped realistically and dynamically simulated. With tools such as the business plan or the business model canvas, students are supported in the start-up process. Then they have to survive on the market with their companies. This includes, among other things, the reaction to market changes, the raising of capital and the valuation of the company.
The Entrepreneurship Lab offers students of the master's degree programs in Business Administration, Economics and Business Chemistry the opportunity to develop a project on a practical problem in cooperation with a regional startup company. The aim of the Entrepreneurship Lab is that students work on a relevant Entrepreneurship topic from the point of view of a real business.
This course is designed for future founders, CTOs (Chief Technology Officers), and anyone who wants to know how to develop technology-based innovations and bring them to market in startups and large companies.
Students explore the entrepreneurial process using a learning by doing methodology. The lecture and case studies sessions provide and discuss tools and methods of creating, visualizing, and analyzing digital business models (eg, business model canvas, lean startup, design thinking). In a group project, students transfer and apply those tools and methods to create, evaluate, plan, and pitch their own tech startup ideas.
Both startups and established companies have started to realize that designing and maintaining great user experience (UX) is the best way to build trust, retention, and loyalty of staff and customers alike.
Winter semester 2025/26
Wednesday 10:30 a.m.–2:00 p.m., Building 25.02/Room 02.21
