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€14.2 Million for “Excellence Start-up Center”

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Group photo of four men in suits, two of them sitting at a white table signing a document. © Felix Schmale​/​TU Dortmund
Dr. Ronald Kriedel (Managing Director of the CET), Albrecht Ehlers (Chancellor of TU Dort-mund University and member of the CET’s executive board), Guido Baranowski, Managing Director of TZDO, and Professor Andreas Liening (member of the CET’s executive board) at the signing of the lease agreement.

With the support of the regional government, TU Dort­mund University wants to significantly increase the number of spin-offs in the coming years. To this purpose, Professor Andreas Pinkwart, NRW’s Minister of Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digitalization and Energy, presented a grant agreement amounting to € 14.2 million on Monday, 30 September, to Professor Andreas Liening, member of the executive board of the Center for Entrepreneurship & Transfer (CET). TU Dortmund University is one of six winners in the “Excellence Start-up Center NRW” competition of the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

The regional government is supporting the “Excellence Start-up Center Dort­mund, Westphalian Ruhr Region & South Westphalia”. The start-up center will function as a central contact point for new entrepreneurs and provide co-working offices for developing business ideas and laying the groundwork for start-ups. An open workshop with equipment and a dataspace will also be set up. This workshop will house technical equipment suitable for bringing prototypes and functional models to market maturity. “The field of entrepreneurship will be boosted through numerous qualification measures,” explains Andreas Liening, who alongside his responsibilities as a member of the CET’s executive board is also professor for “Entrepreneurship and Economics Education” at TU Dortmund University.

Minister Pinkwart explained: “Start-ups that spin off from higher education institutions are of major importance for the formation and international competitiveness of regional start-up ecosystems. I’m very pleased that Dortmund is forging ahead here and wants to significantly increase the number of innovative and high-growth spin-offs by enhancing its in-house infrastructure for start-ups.”