20 years of successful business development

Courage is not only a very important ingredient for founders - people who want to launch a business development company also need it - as happened in Hanover 20 years ago. Today's assessment by hannoverimpuls Managing Director Doris Petersen makes one thing clear: the visionary power of the founding fathers of hannoverimpuls has been more than rewarded. Today, for example, around 1,000 start-up projects are supported every year - quite a few of them real success stories that provide work for many people.

To this end, hannoverimpuls is constantly thinking up trends and networks.

For example, there were already offers for companies relating to digitalization - many years before big data, cloud services or data security became buzzwords. 670 internationalization projects have been successfully implemented in 20 years, 1.5 million in prize money awarded in 20 years of the Startup-Impuls start-up competition - and around 80 million euros in funding acquired from innovation projects.

Even in the early years, hannoverimpuls used industry forums to bring the stakeholders of certain topics together to explore the potential of industries and technologies.

Initial ideas were developed further in project centers - and also discarded where necessary. For example, the potential of laser and other photonics applications was explored with the Laser Center and the former SIAG mbH, technologies from the aviation industry were discussed in the cross-industry forum "Crossroads" and new concepts for the automotive industry were thought up and suggested as early as 2006 - thus providing impetus.

"Our measures have constantly evolved over 20 years. But we have always had and still have the courage to break new ground and try things out," explains Doris Petersen, who has been Managing Director of hannoverimpuls since January 2020. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, she began her work under special conditions - some of her employees were working from home - and with a fixed goal in mind: to help companies from the city and region out of crisis mode with as much momentum as possible. Instead of being able to familiarize herself with her tasks and get to know her team and contacts in peace and quiet, the new Managing Director of hannoverimpuls had to dive straight into her work and confer with her employees digitally.

"One of the topics on my to-do list at the time was, of course, digitalization and the question: How digital should business development be?

The virus and the associated contact restrictions have rapidly accelerated implementation: In no time at all, we have relaunched numerous analog offerings as digital formats. In times when the economy is virtually at a standstill, business development has to deliver at full steam in order to provide impetus for the necessary flexibility, creativity and innovative spirit of companies," she describes this challenging time in retrospect. "When it comes to digitalization, we have certainly only covered a small part of the necessary path, but the speed with which the team implemented formats such as the consulting day or offers such as Gründer kompakt digital during the pandemic deserves special recognition." By the end of 2020, 896 companies had received advice and asked hannoverimpuls over 6,000 questions on various topics during this challenging time.

Doris Petersen believes that teamwork and cooperation are key components of hannoverimpuls' success story - then as now.

Sparkasse Hannover, one of the first supporters of the start-up competition, the Employment Agency, Hannover's universities and many more: "We actively build bridges between companies, science, institutions and politics in order to create synergies and promote the exchange of experience. Because we know: Together we can achieve more," says Doris Petersen, delighted with all those who have helped write this success story and will continue to do so. An exciting current cooperation project that Team 2022 has presented to the public: Digital Health City Hannover, a showcase project for digital healthcare in Germany.

In the future, topics such as digital transformation, sustainability and climate protection will continue to challenge the business development team - but for now, we are celebrating Hannover's achievements together with the founding fathers, companions and the team.

Are you interested in further text and image material? Your press contact: Katharina Nörthemann, katharina.noerthemann@hannoverimpuls.de , Tel.: 0511 300 333-74