Professor Dr. Andreas Pinkwart, North Rhine-Westphalia's State Minister of Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digitalization and Energy: "The Co:Creation Lab will strengthen the ecosystem for start-ups in North Rhine-Westphalia."
Deutsche Telekom is equipping the Co:Creation Lab, located at TH Köln, with state-of-the-art, stand-alone 5G network technology
The Co:Creation Lab will be an entrepreneurship hub for start-up founders – a place where 100,000 students in Cologne can put their ideas into practice
Good news for Cologne's students and start-up founders: the 5G Co:Creation Lab, housed at TH Köln's Mülheim location, has been inaugurated. The Lab was officially opened by Professor Dr. Andreas Pinkwart, North Rhine-Westphalia's State Minister of Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digitalization and Energy, by Claudia Nemat, Member of the Deutsche Telekom Board of Management, Technology and Innovation, and by representatives of cooperating partners TH Köln and the University of Cologne's GATEWAY Exzellenz Start-up Center.
Pinkwart welcomed Deutsche Telekom's initiative for the project, noting that "we want to take a leading role in 5G technology. And the Co:Creation Lab fits perfectly with this aim. We need places like this at which start-up founders can develop innovative ideas in a creative environment."
"We want to use the Co:Creation Lab, which is part of the "TechCluster NRW" initiative, to promote innovation in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). The current situation in which we all find ourselves has been reminding us that good network access and digital participation are essential resources. And 5G is a key technology that is becoming ever more important in this context. With its low network latency and high bandwidth, it will open the door to new worlds of experience in the areas of education, entertainment, mobile working and industry. We have equipped the Co:Creation Lab with state-of-the-art 5G network technology. As a result, this technology of tomorrow has become available to start-up founders today, for development of new products in cooperation with innovators at universities, in industry and in the start-up-founder ecosystem. In sum, the Co:Creation Lab will give Cologne's start-up sector a true competitive advantage," Nemat added.
A living ecosystem that promotes entrepreneurship
The Lab will be a center for cooperation between universities and companies. And it will be open both to the 100,000 students at Cologne's universities and to entrepreneurs throughout the region and the state of NRW.
At the Lab, university-based start-up founders will have exclusive opportunities to cooperate with industrial partners in testing and refining their ideas within a new, state-of-the-art 5G network. The soccer club 1. FC Köln, for example, plans to support the Lab by providing research topics of strategic relevance and by testing early-phase solutions in its own operating environment.
Overall, the Lab is expected to explore a wide range of projects, with focuses such as the following: Systems for guiding robots safely through factories. City-tour systems using augmented reality to provide additional information, overlaid within viewing devices, about real-world objects. Systems for virtual soccer-goal-shooting contests in which players can face off against favorite soccer stars. And, and, and ...
This year, Cologne's universities were very successful in their cooperative efforts to promote entrepreneurship and start-ups. In particular, close cooperation between TH Köln and the University of Cologne has given a special boost to the Cologne region's start-up sector. Together with Cologne's other universities, and with hochschulgründernetz cologne e.V. (hgnc), an association that provides expert advising for would-be start-up founders, TH Köln coordinates the "Fit for Invest" project, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) EXIST – University-Based Business Start-Up project framework. In Fit for Invest, the participating universities are jointly promoting entrepreneurship and start-ups in Cologne, and coordinating their various efforts in the process – for example, they have been moving to consolidate their start-up-related services.
Also, a "Code & Context" degree program at TH Köln is training students in areas of coding, design and entrepreneurship relative to the development of digital products.
In addition, Cologne's start-up sector has been receiving additional support, since last year, from the University of Cologne's GATEWAY Excellence Start-up Center (ESC). The GATEWAY ESC is funded by North Rhine-Westphalia's State Ministry of Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digitalization and Energy. With these efforts, the University of Cologne is now supporting both a) start-ups that emerge from the university and b) a culture of entrepreneurial ideas and action. The ESC offers coaching for start-ups, advising on available funding, incubator space, and an accelerator program. Also, eight new professorships with an entrepreneurial orientation are being established in the ESC framework, in a total of four academic departments, along with a broad program of instruction and events.
In addition to participating in the Co:Creation Lab, the GATEWAY ESC plans to cooperate with Deutsche Telekom in sponsoring a range of hackathons and workshops aimed at promoting technological innovation among students and young entrepreneurs seeking to launch start-ups. As a result, teams of young start-up founders will have early access to the technical tools and professional resources they need for technology-based start-up projects.
"The close cooperation between the University of Cologne, TH Köln and other Cologne universities, in the area of entrepreneurship, is oriented to the ambitious goal of making Cologne and the "Rhineland Valley" a leading region for start-ups. Their Co:Creation Lab joint project, housed at TH Köln, is another noteworthy step on our journey toward that goal, a journey we are undertaking in collaboration with Deutsche Telekom and business partners such as 1. FC Köln. We heartily thank these partners for their support, and we are eagerly looking forward to the many innovative projects and start-ups that will emerge from this partnership," noted Professor Dr. Kai Thürbach, professor for entrepreneurship and Cologne universities' representative in the Fit for Invest team, on the occasion of the inauguration.
Deutsche Telekom |
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