Entrepreneurship in Bavaria

Entrepreneurship plays a crucial role in modern knowledge societies. Startup companies enter the market with novel products, services and business models, fostering innovation and economic development. A vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem can be a major source of employment and contributes to the competitiveness of one’s economy. Acknowledging the importance of entrepreneurship, policy makers become increasingly involved in creating entrepreneurship-friendly environments. However, identifying suitable concepts for entrepreneurship support requires a thorough understanding of entrepreneurs’ requirements and recent trends in the entrepreneurship ecosystem. This study identifies recent trends in entrepreneurship and applies entrepreneurial means to come up with novel concepts for the creation of a more entrepreneurial-friendly ecosystem in Bavaria.

"Availability of funding for startups": Availability of funding is one of the most important success factors for startups in every phase. Startups depend on funding for research, prototyping, growth and paying wages. Hence, availability of funding can be very crucial to enable sustainable success. Availability in this case means how likely it is that a startup gets funded. It has nothing to do with the overall liquidity of the economy. Thus, there can be a lot of money inside the economy, but investors tend to not invest in startups, but in something else. We examine the bipolar outcomes for the availability of private and/or public funding for startups in Bavaria. Outcome A means easy access to a large amount of funding. Outcome B means little or no funding for startups in terms of amount and/or accessibility.

"Availability of qualified employees for startups": The second pivotal factor for the success of startups in Bavaria is the availability of qualified employees to work for startups. More precisely, this availability depends on the level of qualification of workers and their willingness to work for a startup. In order to grow sustainably and compete on the market, it is of utmost importance to attract highly skilled people for all divisions, such as product development, marketing, and financing. The availability of qualified employees for startups can thus be seen as a vital factor determining the success or failure of newly founded ventures. Again, we examine two extreme outcomes for this key driver. Outcome A means that the availability of qualified workers for startups is high and qualified employees believe that startups are a great place to work. Outcome B implies that there is no availability of a suitable startup workforce.

The two key drivers and their outcomes create the scenario matrix. Each key driver represents one of the axis, with bipolar outcomes on each end. All four scenarios are based on extreme outcomes of both key drivers. Plausible and consistent outcomes of other important drivers are included in each of the scenarios, but not taken to an extreme. “The Garden of E“ describes a society with a high availability of qualified workers for startups and at the same time these startups have access to a large amount of funding. “Me, Myself & Money Mountain” describes a world in which the access to the amount of funding is the same as in “The Garden of E”, but there is no availability of qualified workers for startups. “The Intrapreneurial Way” is a future with neither availabilty of qualified workers for startups nor access to a large amount of funding. Accordingly, “Idealistic Drive” describes a future with high avaliabtilty of qualified workers without any access to a large amount of funding.

1. CLIPS: The Customized Legal Information Platform for Startups

2. E-TRINITY: Turning Students into Entrepreneurs

3. BAVARIAN STARTUP CERTIFICATE: Identify High-Potential Startups

4. TECHCITY: Boosting Innovation & Entrepreneurship in Bavaria

5. INVESTOR VISITING PROGRAM: Bringing Foreign Capital into Bavarian Startups