Why is it worthwhile to found a start-up at RUB?
Interdisciplinary teams are successful founding-teams – this is what researchers at the Entrepreneurship Research Institute at Technische Universität München, commissioned by the Joachim Herz Stiftung, discovered. Alongside various measures regarding academic facilitation in the range of founding, they explicitly pointed out the aspect of interdisciplinarit (cf. https://www.wiwo.de/erfolg/gruender/zaghafte-ausgruendungen-wir-brauchen-einen-oliver-samwer-fuer-techies/26898514.html, accessed last 03.05.2021).
With its 20 faculties, more than 42.000 (inter-)national students, more than 6000 (inter-) national employees and 300 partnerships (cf. https://uni.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/de/zahlen-und-fakten, accessed last 03.05.2021), the Ruhr-University Bochum offers a solid basis for building up interdisciplinary teams in which one’s own start-up project can be driven forward supported by a wide range of competences and expertise within the team.
Especially start-up projects with distinct focus on sustainability are, in the case of successful spin-off, a prime example for the demand of interdisciplinary collaboration. Genuine sustainable products, services or technologies and the complex socially relevant challenges of our time can no longer be solely developed by experts under a bell jar – here, cooperation and collaboration between various experts and talented all-rounders are required.
And exactly at this point of intersection of sustainability and interdisciplinarity the hour strikes for chemistry. Because many research endeavours within the field of chemistry, in an early stadium, already address at least one of the 17 Sustainability goals given by the UN (https://sdgs.un.org/goals). Especially here, there is a need for full development of the already existing potential towards the utilization of different chemistry distant expert knowledge.
As the Start4Chem incubator of the Worldfactory Start-up Center at the RUB, we support people interested in founding, to incorporate complementary expert knowledge into their teams. Especially teams within the field of chemistry are often strong and excellent in their own professionality and realise with progressing work on their projects that they, for example, desperately need advice concerning engineering or business and economics. Thus, a proficient salesman might be required to place an own idea in the market and to get potential customers excited about it – here, it is not enough to solely work with external consulting. Once this important milestone regarding team insight has been achieved by the team itself, we at Start4Chem are ready to support with the help of finding and/or placement of new team members.
A low-threshold first step for acquisition of new team members could be, for example, the Stellenwerk portal available under the category “Wer gründet mit?” (https://www.stellenwerk-bochum.de/jobboerse/wer-gruendet-mit). Here, no-cost job advertisements can be placed, for the purpose of gathering new team members for start-ups.
Ultimately, it is all about forming a strong team, in which the members trust each other and build on one another and also about the respective expert knowledge and competences. What’s more, regarding team development, we also like to offer our services as a sparring partner for future founding teams.