Eleven theses formulate how universities can successfully teach entrepreneurial thinking and behaviour.

The Stifterverband and Campus Founders are the initiators of the Entrepreneurial Skills Charter. As the first signatories, 45 universities have committed to implementing the charter and strengthening entrepreneurship education at their institutions, including the University of Oldenburg. In the university context, entrepreneurship education is understood as the teaching of skills that promote entrepreneurial thinking and independent action. These include future-relevant skills such as creative, visionary and economic thinking, as well as the ability to mobilise resources and motivate oneself and others. In order to impart these skills effectively to students, but also to young academics and researchers, the training of these entrepreneurial aspects must be structurally anchored in the curriculum as a cross-cutting topic.

The Entrepreneurial Skills Charter is committed to spreading the understanding of entrepreneurial skills on campus and strengthening start-up skills. The University of Oldenburg does not have to be at the forefront here, as it is one of the best start-up universities in Germany. In addition to an excellent ranking in the Gründungsradar 2020, which analyses start-up support at German universities, the University of Oldenburg was recently praised in a study by the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture (MWK) for its diversity of teaching in the field of entrepreneurship.

Those interested in setting up their own business (students, employees, academics and alumni) are given targeted support at the university in transferring their ideas, technologies and research findings into potential business ideas. The Start-up and Innovation Centre supports founders in the pre-start-up and early start-up phase by providing coaching and advice. In addition to these advisory services, the start-up support provided by the Department for Research and Technology Transfer also offers awareness-raising and training in the form of events.

This start-up support programme is flanked by teaching. In addition to interdisciplinary entrepreneurship teaching, the Professorship of Entrepreneurship (Prof. Dr Alexander Nicolai) supports start-up teams through various measures such as the provision of start-up know-how, capital procurement, coaching or the mediation of partners in the entrepreneurship network. The adjunct professorship Innovation Management & Sustainability (Apl. Prof. Dr Klaus Fichter) deals with aspects of innovation management and the generation of "green" future markets as well as environmentally-oriented entrepreneurship (eco-entrepreneurship). She is also responsible for the Eco-Entrepreneurship teaching module and the part-time Master's degree programme in Innovation Management & Entrepreneurship, which is based at the Centre for Lifelong Learning (C3L).

Further information can be found in the press release from the Stifterverband: https://www.stifterverband.org/pressemitteilungen/2022_07_04_entrepreneurial_skills_charta