Influencing Entrepreneurship - Heidelberg (ePub)

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,7 (A-), University of Hull (Business School), course: Entrepreneurship & Innovation, language: English, abstract: "As traditional manufacturing sectors and regions fell into crisis"2, "new firms and entrepreneurialism have become the focus of business interest."3 Entrepreneurship is the "... pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled ..."4 or "... the process of creating something new with value ..."5. Entrepreneurs create jobs, facilitate productive change and vitalize competition6 and hence most cities support them ("Industry" analysis · Appendix 1).

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Figure 1 - Baden-Württemberg

The city Heidelberg of the German state Baden-Württemberg is located in the Rhein-Neckar Triangle (· Figure 17) and said to be attractive for entrepreneurs in biotech, life-sciences and telecommunications.8 Highlights of the city's achievements are:

The German magazine "Focus" chose Heidelberg as the Best City for Start-Ups and as "Germany's Number 2 in Future Potential and Economic Power".
The RNT won the national BioRegio competition.
Heidelberg is the "[m]ost Important Research Place in Germany".
No. 4 in Germany in Future Economic Growth said the magazine "Capital".

Challenges for biotech companies "are the creation and protection of intellectual property, the effective use of enterprise technology to capture and share knowledge, and the increasing pressures of globalization, convergence and the regulatory environment." And "the experience of Route 128 and Silicon Valley ... suggests that there are important regional sources of competitive advantage." What are these sources for Heidelberg?