Scientific entrepreneurship

Compared to the many domains of entrepreneurship research and practice, scientific entrepreneurship - a notion essentially coined by Norbert Szyperski - still lacks systematic and comparative studies. The collection of EXIST-related projects, experiences, key success factors, and recommendations in this festschrift for Norbert Szyperski on the occasion of his 80th birthday can be regarded as a „best of“-contribution to scientific entrepreneurship. They provide deep insights into the development of the EXIST program in Germany, related learning, and recommendations over a period of 10 years and beyond. In order to group the many contributions to this liber amicorum, we begin with articles which discuss „EXIST at a glance“. Afterwards, a deep insight is provided into the diversity as well as the different forms of institutionalization possibilities for „collaborations and networks“ for scientific entrepreneurship. The next articles demonstrate different approaches on how to „engineer the process of idea generation“ and on how to „systematically match“ potent ideas with people and potentially with funding. The tasks of „counseling and education“ are the focal point of many EXIST projects. Therefore, it is no wonder that the majority of our articles emphasize these two important fields of action. Last but not least, two closely related perspectives were stressed by our final articles due to the fact that technology-intensive and knowledge-based start-ups quasi automatically act in the global market place and especially have the potential to grow faster and more successfully than other types of start-ups. Therefore, the perspectives of „internationalization and growth“ are discussed at the end of this festschrift.