Fact-Finding-Mission

The University of Oldenburg puts out feelers in India’s direction

A delegationof the Carl von Ossietzky Universität of Oldenburg travelled on August 27th to India for fourteen days in order to initiate co-operations with Indian universities in the range of entrepreneurship. Amongst the delegation of this fact-finding-mission were under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Alexander Nicolai (Endowed Chair for Entrepreneurship) the research assistants Ann-Christine Schulz (degree in economics) and Jantje Halberstadt, M.Sc. as well as entrepreneur and board member of the pre-incubator VentureLab e.V. Matthias Hunecke. The projekt was made possible through the „EWE Foundation“ and the “German Academic Exchange Service“ (DAAD).

In the course of the mission the Deleg­ation visited different universities in the cities of Mumbai, Hyderabad und Bangalore. These were amongst others the renowned Institute of Management in Bangalore and the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, which have partnerships with well-known management-institutes in the USA and Europe, but also the S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR) and the Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research in Mumbai. On the schedule was also besides these four academic establishments the visit of German agencies and Indian business companies. They talked to the regional agents of the German Academic Exchange Service and the director of the chamber of foreign trade (AHK) in Mumbai (Bernhard Steinrücker) and visited the to the AHK affiliated training-centre, which offers a dual training program for Indian employees of the resident German business companies.

Goal of the trip was the initiation of different co-operations on an academic level in the range of entrepreneurship. In the future, the exchange of students and lecturers as well as the corporate work on research projects on the subject entrepreneurship will be subject of this project. „At all universities we found great interest for the different projects“, reports Professor Nicolai. Interesting for the university of Oldenburg is that through the extension of the international contact is surely on the one hand a student exchange to India, but also the exchange of ideas about establishment and a German-Indian workshop in the VentureLab e.V. „Further cooperation will already take concrete shape in September “, says Nicolai, „when our professor Suresh Rao of the SPJIMR will visit us in Oldenburg, in order to realize the first ideas of a collective research project.

Internationality­­ becomes more and more important in the development of founders especially in technology- and growth-oriented branches in times of globalisation. The pace of the international diffusion of products and business ideas is increasing. Foreign markets are becoming also for German founders more important. The contact to India – especially to these renowned institutes – is supposed to be accentuated before this background in order to lead to an international orientation in teaching and research of the Endowed Chair of Entrepreneurship.

­The delegation: ­ f. r. Prof. Dr. Alexander Nicolai, Ann-Christine Schulz (degree in economics) and Jantje Halberstadt M.Sc. with ¬Dr. V. Chandrasekar of the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.

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