Alexander Wessel
Summer Student Story
The “Entrepreneurship and Digital Innovation” summer program offered by HEC Paris and TUM School of Management provided an exceptional opportunity for me to gain a comprehensive insight into this field in a condensed timeframe.
The program deepened my understanding of the fundamentals of digital technologies and innovations, particularly their implications for a company's business model. It also helped me to develop key skills essential for digital entrepreneurship.
As a PhD student and enthusiastic engineer, I am always keen to explore emerging technologies and innovations. I am therefore well-aware that digital technologies and innovations like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning will lead to disruptive changes within technical products as well as their related business models. Given my experience in the technical area, I was curious to understand the impact of digitalisation on the business side of product development. The Summer School provided me with the opportunity to gain this understanding. I was able to learn from the academic expertise of Professor Jingui Xie and Professor Jens Foerderer, and engaged with guest speakers from consulting and food industries. As a result, I have developed a better overall understanding of digital technologies and innovations, covering both technological and business-related aspects.
Furthermore, as part of my PhD at the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM in collaboration with the Technical University of Munich, I am currently involved in developing new technological innovations that could potentially be the starting point for a new business venture. Attending this summer program helped me understand the fundamental processes behind building a startup as well as the importance of the surrounding entrepreneurial ecosystem. The lectures by Professor Jean-Rémi Gratadour, a founder and investor himself, were highly inspiring and have motivated me to consider building my own startup after completing my PhD.
Apart from the excellent lectures by Professors Jingui Xie, Jens Foerderer and Jean-Rémi Gratadour, as well as captivating guest speakers, I was fascinated by the cultural and international diversity in the classroom. The interactive lectures and group projects allowed me to collaborate with people from four continents, each with unique backgrounds having a shared driven, open, and entrepreneurial mindset.
In addition, the modern campus of the TUM School of Management in Heilbronn provided exceptional resources for the summer school. Thanks to the significant financial contributions of Dieter Schwarz, the owner of the well-known retail chains Lidl and Kaufland, to the TUM School of Management campus and his hometown as a whole, Heilbronn has become a major hub for digital technologies and innovations in Germany.