Workshop “The Essentials of Starting a Start-up” at ZOLLHOF Nuremberg
Welcome by Prof. Kathrin Möslein
The workshop was opened by Prof. Dr. Kathrin Möslein, Vice President Outreach at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Professor of Information Systems, and a proud member of the FAU Innovation Ecosystem.
In her welcome address, she emphasized the close collaboration between FAU and ZOLLHOF — one of Germany’s leading tech incubators, where the university acts as an active innovation partner.
With the central question, “What is innovation?”, Prof. Möslein challenged participants to view their research projects from a new, practical perspective and to recognize potential for societal applications.
LEGO Serious Play: Creativity Meets Research
Christoph Heyen from the FAU Startup Service led the opening session based on the LEGO® Serious Play method, which is founded on the idea that “hands help thinking.” Building models allows complex thoughts to be visualized and new perspectives to emerge.
Tasks included:
- Building a simple model (a duck from predefined bricks)
- Representing one’s personality
- Two research-related challenges:
- Build your research topic around yourself.
- Who do you want to serve? Complete your vision of the future. Are there real-world problems that your research-based solutions could address?
The goal was to foster teamwork and reflect on research topics in the context of potential societal applications — playfully, yet with depth.
Insights from Practice: Start-up Talk with Matthias Trost
A highlight was the inspiring talk by Matthias Trost, co-founder of AMPERIAL Technologies GmbH, a deep tech start-up near Nuremberg. The company develops intelligent electrochromic window films that reduce heat and energy consumption in buildings and vehicles.
AMPERIAL emerged from research at the Energy Campus Nuremberg (ENCN) and was supported by the EXIST Gründerstipendium and the European Social Fund.
Matthias shared valuable insights into the journey from research to founding a company, illustrating how a technological idea became a sustainable solution with market potential.
Ideation Workshop: From Idea to Pitch
To conclude, Dr. Judit Klein, Head of Startups@ZOLLHOF, led an ideation workshop where participants developed creative business ideas in groups, focusing on unlocking the entrepreneurial potential of “Hypersonic Sound” technology.
A unique feature: after ranking their ideas into three “better” and three “worse” ones, groups deliberately focused on a supposedly “bad” idea — but from another group, not their own. The task was to develop needs, solutions, and potential value around this idea and present it in a two-minute pitch.
This exercise showcased how groups differently evaluate ideas, interact, and how challenging — yet rewarding — it can be to move beyond one’s favorites and creatively work with a “foreign, bad” idea.
The workshop ended with a short tour of the ZOLLHOF building, giving participants a glimpse into the working environment of a tech incubator.
Conclusion
The workshop provided valuable insights for cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset, fostering teamwork, creativity, and transfer thinking. It encouraged participants to explore new paths — especially those eager to make their research socially impactful.
“I really liked the part I took part in. Especially the talk from AMPERIAL and building the Lego ducks. It was interesting to hear a different career perspective.”
A heartfelt thank you to everyone involved — especially Matthias Trost, Dr. Judit Klein, Christoph Heyen, the ZOLLHOF team, all participants, and Prof. Kathrin Möslein for her inspiring words on the importance of innovation and application-oriented research.
