Start-up workshop @ ZOLLHOF
Curious and full of expectation, a horde of FRASCALis and EBMers entered the elegant halls of the ZOLLHOF in Nuremberg on May 20th. We were greeted in a relaxed atmosphere by Prof. Dr. Kathrin Möslein, Vice President Outreach at FAU, who introduced us to the idea behind the collaboration between FAU and ZOLLHOF as one of Germany`s leading tech incubators.
With the central question, “What is innovation?”, Prof. Möslein challenged participants to view their research projects from a new, practical perspective and to recognize potential for societal applications. Christoph Heynen then introduced the most fun part of the program. The workshop participants were allowed to make their way through countless boxes of Lego bricks. The idea behind this LEGO® Serious Play method follows the principle of „hands help thinking“. By building, abstract ideas are visualized and can thus be communicated.
After the various research projects have been explained, Matthias Trost presented his path of funding a start-up and briefly mentioned intellectual property, working relations between scientists/engineers and business people, as well as, financing options. Dr. Judit Klein discussed, i.a., the ranking of viability, feasibility and desirability, which was counterintuitive for many engineers who wanted to focus on the feasibility and development of a technology first, rather than checking the actual market need and viability beforehand.
After watching a video introducing a new technology, groups of three developed their three best and worst ideas for promoting that technology. The three worst were discarded and each group had to develop a need, solutions and values for one of the worst ideas from another group. This exercise showed how differently each group evaluated their ideas, how the group interacted and how easy/hard it was to break away from their original best ideas and work with the „bad“ idea. The very interesting and productive workshop ended with a tour of the Zollhof building.
Text: Andrea Dakkouri-Baldauf, Lucie Spannraft & Anna Donhauser
Pictures: Andrea Dakkouri-Baldauf & Anna Donhauser