And the Stöbich Entrepreneurship Promotion Award 2024 goes to...

... Dr. Michael Fröhlich from the Technical University of Munich! At the festive award ceremony in the STÖBICH showroom, the young scientist and aspiring company founder was honored for his outstanding dissertation.

How do university entrepreneurship programs affect the founding activities of the participants? This year's winner of the Stöbich Entrepreneurship Doctoral Prize, Dr. Michael Fröhlich from the University of Munich, got to the bottom of this question. In a keynote speech, he presented the methods and results of his dissertation “Can entrepreneurship be learned?” and finally answered the question of his title briefly and concisely: “It works!” According to the study, the probability of founding a successful company doubles if the participants have previously completed the entrepreneurship program at the university, which combines theory and practice. Dr. Fröhlich proved this, among other things, by presenting various well-known start-ups, some of which had even received more than a billion dollars in venture capital and are now considered “unicorns”.

In his laudatory speech, the chairman of the jury and head of the Entrepreneurship Hub at the TU Braunschweig and Ostfalia University, Prof. Dr. Reza Asghari, praised Dr. Fröhlich's outstanding work, which in turn also demonstrated the social added value of such programs, such as the creation of new jobs. Dr. Fröhlich's research work sets “new standards for the analysis and evaluation of entrepreneurship programs”. Prof. Dr. Asghari had previously taken the audience back in time when he and Dr.-Ing. Jochen Stöbich launched the Stöbich Entrepreneurship Doctoral Prize. Our company founder still shapes the STÖBICH philosophy of promoting progress, and this spirit was also felt in the moving speech of his youngest daughter Liesa Stöbich.

Overall, it was an inspiring evening, during which other representatives from the start-up ecosystem also gave speeches and praised our commitment to knowledge transfer and the promotion of entrepreneurship. STÖBICH Managing Director Alexander Dolipski emphasized how proud we are to be awarding this prize for the fourth time for outstanding scientific achievement together with the Entrepreneurship Hub.

At the subsequent get-together with finger food and cold drinks, guests and hosts were able to talk and also exchange ideas with the prizewinner about his dissertation in person.