Turn Ideas into Impact - Career Skills for Changemakers Entrepreneurial Skills
Are you looking for skills that will really get you ahead - in research, in your career and in life? Then our Entrepreneurial Skills training program is just right for you! Whether you are a student, a doctoral student or a postdoc - regardless of your field of study: here you will learn how to get ideas moving.
What you can expect:
- Learn how to translate scientific findings into concrete innovations for business and society
- Identify real needs in the market, society, and industry, and develop practical solutions based on them—from the initial sketch to the prototype
- Bring your expertise to new contexts, build scalable business models, and position them successfully on the market
- Communicate convincingly - master your project pitch with professional rhetoric and storytelling
You don't have to start your own company to benefit from Entrepreneurial Skills
Entrepreneurial skills help you to start your career, to advance, to implement your ideas - wherever initiative, creativity and strategic thinking are required. Entrepreneurial skills are the key to recognizing opportunities, developing potential - and really making a difference. The aim is to put you in a position to actively shape the major challenges of our time - with ideas that make a difference and skills that take you further.
Please note:
hei_INNOVATION will continue to develop Entrepreneurial Skills for the winter semester 2025/2026. All students who are already aiming for the Entrepreneurial Skills Certificate can complete it as planned.
All modules semester 25/26
- Innovation & Entrepreneurship Basics, Start: October 21, 2025
- Innovation Management, Start: October 29, 2025
- Disrupt Yourself, Start: November 7, 2025
- Pitch Training: November 17-18, 2025
- The Scientist Entrepreneurship Course, Start: January 14, 2026 (new date!)
- Startup Lab, Start: March 2, 2026
All Modules at a Glance
Individual module attendance or Entrepreneurial Skills Certificate?
Individual attendance of the modules:
If the aim is not to complete the entire certificate, each module of a station can also be attended individually and the participation will be certified. Most modules are thematically self-contained and can be taken without prior experience in the field of innovation & entrepreneurship or thematically specific prior knowledge. This gives course participants the opportunity to acquire specific (entrepreneurial) skills or to combine just a few modules. The exact requirements for participation can be found in the module handbook.
All modules are held in English; deviations are indicated in the course description.
Entrepreneurial Skills Certificate:
The Entrepreneurial Skills Certificate serves as proof of comprehensive basic training in the field of entrepreneurship. The module offering consists of a module path that offers elective options at certain stages. All courses combine the learning of theoretical basics with practical exercises. Given that Heidelberg University, as a comprehensive university, offers a wide range of academic courses in the natural sciences, life sciences, humanities, and social sciences, the courses and their structured enrollment are suitable for students of all disciplines who wish to obtain the certificate.
🎓 Information for PhDs:
Our programs are open to all members of the university. We recognize the unique needs of PhD students and want to accommodate them. We will soon be offering special courses tailored specifically for PhD students. Until then, we want to emphasize that all our courses can also be taken individually—regardless of the overall Entrepreneurial Skills certificate. The registration process via heiCO can sometimes be difficult. Therefore, for each course, we offer a separate registration path specifically for PhDs. Please make sure to select the “PhD registration” option when signing up. For individual questions, our education team ( Cheng-Wen Jaw, cheng-wen.jaw@uni-heidelberg ) will be happy to assist you.
