ESC initiative continues until 2024

Following a positive mid-term evaluation, State Minister for Economic Affairs Prof. Andreas Pinkwart advocates an extension of the Exzellenz Start-up Center.NRW initiative.

At the half-time of the Exzellenz Start-up Center.NRW (ESC) initiative, an expert jury sat together to review the status of entrepreneurial support at the top entrepreneurship universities in North Rhine-Westphalia. When the jury first came together in 2019, RWTH Aachen University was selected as one of six NRW universities to establish an Exzellenz Start-up Center. Two and a half years into the initiative, the experts acknowledge the outstanding performance of the participating universities. With an increase from 129 to 191 spin-offs per year, the number of start-ups emerging from the six ESC universities has almost doubled from 2019 to 2021. At RWTH, 101 spin-offs were counted in 2021 alone, 70 of which were actively supported by ESC programs and funds. As a result, the jury decided to extend the ESC initiative until the end of 2024, with the prospect of further extension through 2025.

Building Europe’s leading integrated tech-incubator

Since the beginning of the ESC project in 2019, RWTH Aachen has made significant progress in expanding and professionalizing its entrepreneurial support to turn excellent research into successful start-ups. Driven by the vision to build Europe’s leading integrated tech-incubator, RWTH has been advancing its entrepreneurship activities in six fields of action. With measures ranging from innovation scouting at institutes to prototype funding and market validation through the Innovation Sprint to coaching programs such as the Ideation and Incubation Program to topic-specific knowledge platforms and access to infrastructure in our Expert Hubs all the way to co-working spaces and workshops at the Collective Incubator, RWTH is well on track to embed entrepreneurial thinking and action among students and researchers alike.

Read the official MWIDE press release here.

Read the official RWTH press release here.