Start-ups are what the country needs

MAXpreneurs aims to strengthen the start-up culture at the Max Planck Institutes. Germany has a problem: it is still strong in basic research, as recently demonstrated by the successful acquisition of a total of 61 ERC Advanced Grants, which secured the country first place in Europe. Twelve of these grants went to Max Planck researchers. At the same time, Germany is not in a position to put this horsepower on the road and turn it into successful start-ups and companies, as Thomas Sattelberger, former State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, recently stated in an article in WirtschaftsWoche.   "In addition to a lack of entrepreneurship culture, a difficult financing environment, poor tax conditions and a lack of exit opportunities for investors, there are always delays in negotiating licensing agreements between founders and the universities or research institutions," says Ulrich Mahr, a member of the management board of Max Planck Innovation GmbH, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Max Planck Society. In fact, the picture in Germany is very heterogeneous when it comes to supporting spin-offs from academic research. The participation and licensing conditions have changed again and again over the last 30 years - and this is also the case with the MPG.