The tour kicked off on September 22 in Stuttgart with a VIP busload of startups, corporate representatives, representatives from startup support organizations, and officials from the ministry.
Our first stop was in Karlsruhe at the new.NewFestival CODE_n. After a conversation on the bus with State Secretary for Economic Affairs Katrin Schütz, we’re now making a detour to the EnBW Innovation Day: Over the course of three days, employees at the company campus learned new skills, surveyed customers, analyzed data, and developed eight different business models. Then came the pitch session. The winner is “die Versteckdose”—it’ll be exciting when we no longer have to plug our devices into wherever there happens to be an outlet (always in the wrong place!), but can instead place them exactly where we want them.
We then headed to the closing concert of the New.new.Festival and on to Frankfurt.
We had breakfast at the Social Lab on Friday, where we had a lively discussion about social entrepreneurship. Delicious and informative! Thanks!
A visit to Deutsche Bahn’s SkyDeck offered breathtaking views—both of Frankfurt Central Station and of the benefits Deutsche Bahn offers its employees. Not a trace of a state-owned corporation. If they implement even a fraction of what’s being developed there, I’ll buy a BahnCard 100.
Afterward, we had Clark, a fintech company, explain new methods of insurance brokerage to us. While rapid growth achieved by displacing established brokers doesn’t change the rules of an industry viewed with considerable skepticism—or its incentive structures—it may be helpful when it comes to gaining an overview of the market. The model does not yet represent a completely new approach with transparent incentives that clearly puts the customer’s interests first. We’ll have to wait and see.
At the Deutsche Börse Incubator, several fintech companies based there pitched their ideas over pizza and mate. The topics ranged from financial planning—with or, quite the opposite, without any financial advice at all—to a simpler way for small and medium-sized businesses to compare loans. Exciting!
Unfortunately, I had to get off the bus because we had two concerts to play over the weekend (they went well!). The bus set off for Berlin. I’m hoping that Manuel will write about the rest of the tour for our blog from Ulm’s perspective.
