Startup Port | The New Production Institute

Knowledge-based entrepreneurship in Hamburg

How can we promote knowledge-based entrepreneurship?

In order to bundle and expand the support for startups from science in a structured manner, universities and research institutions from the Hamburg metropolitan region have joined forces with institutions from business and politics in the project “Startup Port – Knowledge-based Entrepreneurship in the Hamburg Metropolitan Region”.

Promotion only works together

With the University of Hamburg (UHH), the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW), the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH – project coordinator), and Helmut-Schmidt University (HSU), Hamburg’s four largest universities cooperate with the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), Leuphana University Lüneburg (Leuphana) from Lower Saxony and the University of Applied Sciences Wedel (FH Wedel) from Schleswig-Holstein.

The German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht (HZG) are also involved, as are Nordmetall and ContiTech from the private sector. Political partners of the network are the Hamburg authorities for Economics, Transport and Innovation (BWVI) and for Science, Research and Equality (BWFG) as well as the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts (MWK), which is also co-financing the project.

The Vision

The vision of the joint project is to provide cross-border support for knowledge-based start-ups in the Hamburg metropolitan region.

The following goals are the focus of this project:

The cross-institutional willingness to cooperate should be more systematized and mapped in cooperative structures, as well as transferred into efficient processes based on the division of labor.
Networking within the community enables the structural anchoring of knowledge transfers as well as a higher level of interdisciplinarity in the founding teams.
The coordination of existing offerings through harmonization and bundling of existing formats is to be strengthened.
The offerings at the various facilities are to be supplemented by new activities and formats at the network level.
Existing educational offerings and support formats of the individual collaborative partners are to be opened to all students.
An increase in the quality of the consulting is to be achieved through active cooperation of the start-up consultants in the network.

The Startup Port network uses three cross-university paths to further strengthen knowledge-based startups:

Startup Port ACADEMY contributes to the qualification of students and scientists with a certificate program and includes measures for the further education and development of founders and start-up consulting centers.
Startup Port MATES creates interdisciplinary networking opportunities between start-up actors from all universities and research institutions in the Hamburg metropolitan region.
Startup Port BUSINESS connects startups with the business community, creates access to suitable markets, and promotes the transfer of knowledge from young companies to experienced players in the business community.

These three paths complement the existing offerings of the individual universities and institutions and improve the market opportunities for startups. In addition, Startup Port as a regional community stands for a lively exchange with stakeholders from science, business, and politics.