The course holds immense relevance for students, as it empowers them to develop startup ideas with a positive impact on addressing the pressing global challenges outlined in the United Nations‘ 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
Participating in this course offers a unique opportunity for students to work in interdisciplinary teams, fostering a collaborative environment that encourages creative solutions and innovative thinking towards building a more sustainable and responsible future.
The students not only deepen their understanding of sustainability but also equip themselves with the necessary skills to become active agents of change and contribute significantly to shaping a better world.

Content

The International Startup Competition „SPARK STARTUP LAB: 17 sustainability goals” is open for students for ECTS acquisition. It offers a series of workshops to assist participants in developing and implementing business ideas. It is an introduction to the innovation and entrepreneurial mindset. The workshops, which are based on the key aspects of an entrepreneurial journey, cover the following topics:

• Kickoff: Ideation and Team building
• 1. Topic : Problem Solution Fit
• 2. Topic : Value Proposition Canvas
• 3. Topic : Market
• 4. Topic : Marketing & Sales
• 5. Topic : Business Model Fit
• Pitch
• Demoday

The topics are ment to cover the most important aspects of a successful founding journey to enable the students to apply them in their further startup project. The methods are presented in impulses during the courses, the tools belonging to the methods such as canvases and analytics are elaborated by the students. Through literature study, the learnings can be deepened. In the end, teams present their ideas as a pitch to an expert jury, with the opportunity to win prizes. The event provides a comprehensive learning experience in business idea development and implementation.
This course is run in cooperation with BadenCampus (Nora Röttele and Stefan Rogge as speaker in the course), the FoundersClub Freiburg e.V. and the Gründungsbüro of the University of Freiburg. 

This course can be credited as an external BOK course at the ZfS.