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The number of innovation-orientated start-ups in Germany has been declining in recent years. A common reason for the failure of start-ups is that there is no market demand for the products and services on offer and too little attention is paid to this issue. However, market research is an important prerequisite for successful business start-ups. Therefore, an information research guide for market research is presented, which contains a methodical and structured procedure and shows the individual areas of investigation in the market research process. The information research guide is based on extensive practical and theoretical experience from the university and consultancy environment. It is supplemented by a literature and information resource search in university libraries in Silicon Valley, which successfully support their students regarding start-ups in a variety of ways from the beginning of their studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The FinTech market in Germany is a dynamic and growing field that is difficult to observe in its entirety. This report provides a hand-collected market overview of the Fin- Tech market in Germany, as well as an application case in terms of volume estimates for the financing and asset management segments through December 2021. The data includes various verified characteristics of 978 unique companies that can be classified under the financial technology sector and operate in Germany. Each observation represents a company with 24 variables, including name, address, legal form, founders with corresponding LinkedIn accounts, registration number or company ID, assignment to FinTech segments and sub-segments, banking cooperation, URL address, local court, former name, operating status. We provide the description of the variables as well as a taxonomy to categorize FinTechs. The dataset contains both established companies and startups and presents valuable information for researchers, practitioners and also regulators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This teaching case deals with challenges of global virtual teams in start-up setting. Sunny Technologies is a born global from Germany. Five employees manage projects in the Sunbelt region and provide special technological solutions for gaining and storing energy from renewable resources. The project manager and an entrepreneur Angela Schmitz is working on negotiations with the first international customer and here is how it goes ... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Equity crowdfunding, financing a project or venture through many small investments of a large group of investors, has received growing attention from the media and scholars. This study focuses on what motivates entrepreneurs to crowdfund in Germany. The study researched the motivation of 11 entrepreneurs to use German equity crowdfunding platforms. This study uses a research approach novel in the field of venture financing, the means-end approach. One of the findings is that entrepreneurs use equity crowdfunding to successfully collect funds from rather emotionally investing crowdinvestors to finance their ventures' future growth and to signal investment viability to follow-up investors. Crowdfunding also allows entrepreneurs to keep decision-making power over the venture better than by using traditional sources of funding. The findings indicate that crowdfunding attracts entrepreneurs who could not secure funding from other sources of capital as well as entrepreneurs who see the additional benefits it can provide over other sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increased impact from fluctuating energy sources like wind and photovoltaics significantly affects the operational regime of conventional power plants. In the near future, even former base load power plants such as the large-scale lignite plants in Germany will need to start and shut down to balance the electricity system. As frequent starts were not in the focus of optimisation in the past, an extensive potential can be expected to reduce start-up costs and environmental impacts. In order to investigate such optimisation potentials, a comprehensive dynamic simulation model has been developed including process components such as boiler and water-steam cycle but also the power plants control system along with start-up sequence control. After successfully reproducing a reference start of the power plant, the model has been used to identify restrictions for faster start-ups, less fuel consumption and less emission while keeping the thermal and mechanical stress, caused by higher ramp rates, within acceptable bounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vital role of entrepreneurship for economic growth and its impact for job creation in mature and developing economies is widely recognized and quantified (OECD, Entrepreneurship and Business Statistics, 2015). According to Get2growth data (How Many Startups Are There?, 2015), 100 million start-ups are created each year of which 1.35% are technology-based companies, and according to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity (Fairlie, 2013), almost a quarter of new businesses in the USA were started by entrepreneurs aged 55 and older. Survival following failure data for start-ups are numerous and complex in the interpretation, and data presented by the Statistic Brain (Startup business failure rate by industry, 2015) show a 55% failure rate within the fifth year. Entrepreneurship is important for growth but sustainable entrepreneurship is hard to achieve. This paper, by means of a case study of a German private art museum 'Kunstmuseum Gehrke-Remund', analyzes the disruptive methods, both atypical and contrary to the mainstream art industry, developed to ensure the sustainable success of such an innovative endeavor. Our analyses and results contribute to the understanding of the building blocks and roadmap designed by the Kunstmuseum to successfully enter the elitist contemporary art industry, as an outsider, and provide an early indication that such methods can be theoretically replicated in other industries by other entrepreneurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we examined the long-term effects of supporting welfare recipients by means of a subsidy to start their own business. We used administrative data and propensity score matching to estimate the impact of the subsidy on the probability of receiving welfare benefits and on unemployment status up to 72 months after programme start. We supplemented our estimation results with the results of a qualitative survey which provided insights into the diversity of entrepreneurial activities and the recipients' motivation for starting a business. Our results are encouraging. We found a stable positive effect on the outcomes of interest. We further found that foreign nationals and the long-term unemployed benefit the most. We conclude that the subsidy allows some people to successfully start a business who would not have otherwise done so and who would have been less successful by choosing the alternative of continued job search. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Opportunities often emerge in the form of technological inventions that offer ways to create or deliver new value to prospective customers across a broad range of industries. This study investigates how the radicalness of technological inventions is tied to performance (sales growth) in young technology-based ventures. Using a combination of survey and patent data from 85 spin-offs from public research institutions in Germany, we identify the degree of technological competition and product diversification as important moderators in the relationship between technological radicalness and venture performance. Radicalness is found to have a positive impact on sales growth when competition in the particular technology field is high and when the venture's product portfolio is not diversified. Overall, these findings contribute to a better understanding of when and how ventures can successfully exploit radical technological inventions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As a rule, a technology transfer gap exists between research and development and the commercialisation of the results. This article investigates the role of new ventures for technology transfer from universities and research institutions as well as between or within companies to close this gap. Based on case studies in Germany and Switzerland, different examples of this technology transfer approach have been analysed. Academic spin-offs can help to transfer technology from universities and research institutions to industry especially if there is the need for additional funding to further develop the technology. Corporate spin-outs can be used for technology transfer between companies as an alternative to closing operations should these no longer fit into the parent organisation. Internal start-ups were identified as a new approach for company internal technology transfer from research departments to business units focused on commercial operations to overcome innovation barriers within companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on longitudinal data, this article examines empirically the long-term export behaviour of German and British technology-oriented firms founded between 1987 and 1996. Applying logit models, the results show that firms can overcome high entry costs by acquiring firm-specific assets. Similarly, firm-specific resources prevent high-tech companies from exiting the international market. The strategic role of investment in R&D is stressed in particular by the data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Works councils have been an important vehicle of collective representation in most Western European countries. They have facilitated trade union involvement in employment relations at enterprise level, even when membership levels are relatively low. However, there have been recent doubts about the resilience of the institution, particularly given its lower coverage in expanding areas of employment such as private services and small firms. This article presents qualitative data on the 'start-up' of works councils in France, Germany and Spain, with an emphasis on these sectors. The extension of works councils to difficult sectors depends on establishing clarity about their role, strengthening legislative support, deepening the engagement of external trade unions in their development and ensuring that enterprise actors have realistic expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]