Lisa, could you please provide us with more insight into your background and your role within FAU? 

I have a background international business and management. Before joining the FAU I was working in international sales for a software company. I come from an entrepreneurship family as I grew up in both my parents’ family businesses. At FAU I am part of the FAU spin-off service, where we support all students, employees and alumni in their entrepreneurship endeavours. From basic consultation, support with business plan, funding opportunities and intellectual property rights to entrepreneurship education programs and start-up events – we cover it all and are the central point of contact for anybody that wants to start a business at our university. More specific, I am mainly responsible for the FAU Digital Tech Fellows Program and I am building the bridge between the spin-off service and the FAU EELISA team to develop and create great formats for the EELISA community and leverage the topic of entrepreneurship and innovation not only at the FAU but also amongst all EELISA partners.  

The FAU Digital Tech Fellows Program powered by the FAU Digital Tech Academy allows students to experience what it means to start a business or even better what it takes to be an entrepreneur. What are the key messages that you teach the students who participate in your program? 

Overall, the FAU Digital Tech Fellows Program is FAU’s Elite Entrepreneurship program which targets all students at all faculties and study levels. The key message we teach in this program is that you have to get out of your comfort zone to really see if your start-up idea will work out, that you have to discover and understand your customers to really see if there is a need and a market for your product. In our program we give students the opportunity to experience hands-on what it all takes to be an entrepreneur and most importantly they also experience that failure is part of the game and that without failure you will not succeed as you will not know what to change or do better the next time. Another important message we teach is that in the end it is all about the team and that without a team you will not go far. In the end the lessons our students learn are that there are so many opportunities out there and that you just have to be ready and bold enough to take them on and then just go for it.  

In this program, students from various backgrounds participate—some of them pursue their business ideas, while others return to their normal routines after the program ends. Why do you think that developing innovation skills is useful for everyone, even if not everyone wants to run their own startup? 

As the idea of the program is to give students the opportunity to experience what it is like to be an entrepreneur, we also help them to find out if developing your own business is something for them or not. The methodology and process that we teach in our program can easily be adapted to any project in your life or work, hence it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to create your own business out of it. But the processes and tools we share can be applied in all kinds of fields outside the start-up world. In the end you can see many projects at work or in your life as its own little start-up idea – you have to come up with ideas, you have to discover around the idea, you have to validate the idea, you have to prototype the idea and in the end, you will see if it succeeds and if not you will know what to do better or different the next time. Hence there really isn’t a thing you cannot take away – no matter if you end up starting your own business or not. In life you have to come up with creative and innovative solutions to problems all the time and that really isn’t any different to what you do in a start-up therefore these skills are really for life!  

Lastly, could you share what you find to be the most compelling aspect of EELISA for innovation and entrepreneurship enthusiasts? 

The most compelling aspect of EELISA for innovation and entrepreneurship enthusiasts are the countless opportunities and possibilities the EELISA partner universities offer. Each university is strong in their own way and in certain fields and hence we can only complement each other here. You can participate in online courses from other universities, you can be part of cool innovation and start-up events across Europe or you can participate in activities such as the recent Innovation School in Madrid where several EELISA partner universities came together and organized a great week full of start-up and innovation talks. The exchange with other like minded people which is fostered through the EELISA mobility funding offers countless possibilities to develop yourself further in the areas of innovation and entrepreneurship.