Adjunct Professor / Part-time Lecturer at Steinbeis University
Steinbeis University is the largest private university in Germany. Soon after my graduation I began to work as a part-time lecturer at Steinbeis School of Management and Innovation.
Master-Seminars
Digital Entrepreneurship
This seminar is the first in the series of six consecutive seminars about digital entrepreneurship on the path to the successful launch of a digital innovation. The seminar focuses on the most important steps in the seed and start-up phase of the business life cycle. For the seed phase, participants learn about the latest digital business models with practical examples. The participants should be enabled to develop and sketch a business idea using these impulses and the use of methods (Digital Innovation Model, Business Model Canvas). In the start-up phase, the focus is on the development of the business plan and the application of the Lean Startup method. The seminar will be completed with practical tips for successful implementation.
Contents
- Introduction: Life of founders and entrepreneurs, success factors and business life cycle.
- Seed Phase: Digital innovation, digital business models and strategies for success, developing your own business model.
- Start-up phase: the “ideal” business plan, sales forecast and lean startup method.
- Implementation: Legal entity, project management and how to avoid pitfalls.
- Founding scene: The right environment for start-ups and digital business models.
Example Slides (German only)
Affiliate Marketing
This seminar focuses on the principles of affiliate marketing, the various affiliate business models, the attribution models for the calculation of the commission, and the basic principles of technology. The section “Controlling & Billing” explains how the performance of affiliate marketing can be measured. In the section “Affiliate Management 101” the steps for the successful set-up of a partner program are explained. The seminar shows the chances of affiliate marketing from the merchants’ perspective (providers / shops / advertisers), as well as from the affiliates’ perspective (partners / website owners / publishers) to increase sales, reach new target groups and build innovative business and sales models. Students are enabled to implement, in cooperation with experts, affiliate marketing as part of the marketing mix and to be able to use the partner programs for their own business as partners.
Contents
- Affiliate Marketing 101: Advantages, technology, business models, commissions.
- Attribution models in affiliate marketing: last click xounts, customer journey.
- Technology: links, tracking, channel dispatcher, web services.
- Controlling & billing: Commissions, reporting, fraud prevention and detection.
- Affiliate management 101: Steps to success, networks vs. private programs.
Example Slides (German only)
Search Engine Marketing
Users of search engines are already enabled in the following way: they express a specific and still unsatisfied need with their search query. It is the search engine operators’ endeavor to provide the user with a perfect match between search query and organic search results, or contextual advertising, to deliver relevant and useful content. For providers of digital services, the opportunity exists here to direct interested and already willing users to their own offer and thus to acquire buyers and / or customers. This seminar deals with Search Engine Marketing (SEM) as a sub-area of online marketing. The two areas – Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Advertising (SEA) – are looked at in detail and the practical reference is deepened by group work. SEO refers to increasing the visibility of one’s own offer among the organic search results in the search results pages (SERPs). SEA refers to the optimization of adspend and revenue for the cost-effective advertisements in the SERPs.
Contents
- SEO
- Onpage & Offpage optimization
- KPIs, tracking, analysis and tools
- Link building, spamming and legal factors
- SEA
- Keyword Advertising
- Google AdWords, bid strategies, and campaign building
- Analysis and optimization
Example Slides (German only)
Bachelor-Seminars
Entrepreneurship
People were not born being entrepreneurs, but they become entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurial thinking and acting are the basic prerequisites for entrepreneurial success. However, employees nowadays have to be able to understand entrepreneurship in order to implement new products and services in the market to increase competitive advantage. Students are enabled to recognize and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities. The participants should know the most important prerequisites for setting up a company and potential financing instruments. The seminar is completed with practical tips on minimizing risks and hedging as well as sources for start-up support.
Contents
- Recognizing and exploiting market opportunities – Trendscouting
- Requirements for setting up a company
- Finance and fundraising
- Risk management
- Opportunities to support business founders
- Best practice examples
Example Slides (German only)
Digital Media Management
Technological disruption and changes in consumer behavior are continuous and accelerate. Startups take advantage of these opportunities to use disruptive innovations to attack the business models of established media companies or to open up new markets. Big Guys like Amazon, Apple and Google build up their own ecosystems and make traditional content suppliers dispute their value chain through desintermediation. While “digital” is an integral part of the DNA of younger market participants, many media conglomerates gradually transform into a digital strategy by resorting to existing media assets or alternatively build an investment portfolio that is independent of the core business. This seminar examines the status quo of the media sector and trends. Digital innovations and technologies as well as the changed media usage behavior are analyzed using examples and cases. Students are enabled to understand and exploit the digital transformation as a driver of innovation. In addition, the strategic and operational consequences of digitization in the media genres are highlighted.
Contents
- Development and status quo of media markets: books, magazines / newspapers, TV, music
- Consumer behavior and user typologies in the digital age
- Technological drivers and social trends
- Digital transformation promotes innovation
- Disruptive innovation of startups, big guys’ initiatives and transformation
- Strategies of established media companies
- Use the digitalisation practically for your own company
Example Slides (German only)
Innovation Management
“Innovation comes from the producer – not from the customer.” – W. Edwards Deming. In order to foster corporate innovation or build a new company from the ground up, innovators needs knowledge and creativity. With the right methods and techniques, the creativity can be stimulated and new ideas, with innovative potential, can be developed. In this seminar, the basic concepts as well as the importance and necessity of innovation for businesses and methods for the understanding and spread of innovations are explained. Selected trends and examples illustrate the building blocks of innovative products and solutions. Numerous creative techniques allow the innovative power of teams to be unleashed. In group work, students experiment with a selection of these techniques to generate new ideas and develop products and solutions.
Contents
- How are innovations developed?
- Advantages and risks of the innovator in the market
- Fundamentals of innovation management
- Innovation and creativity techniques
Example Slides (German only)
Supervised Theses
- 2017: Insurtech Business Plan (B.A.)
- 2017: Cross-company Job Rotation for Innovation (M.Sc.)
- 2017: E-Commerce Customs Clearance (B.A.)
- 2017: B2B Video (M.Sc.)
- 2016: Insurtech / Healthcare Business Models (M.Sc.)
Looking for Ambitious Students
Topics worth to dig deeper into:
- Fully-automated company building (legal, design thinking methodology, landing pages, analytics, iteration, product-market-fit). Sub-topics available.
- Digital business model financial planning framework.
- Recommendation engine for innovation tools and methods.
- Bionic advise in healthcare and insurance.
- Consequences of insurance distribution directive (IDD) for insurtechs.
- Business idea validation service.