The new DC Chair of Board Dr. Seán Patrick Sassmannshausen gave an interview to the DC Office. Outlining his plans concerning the next chapter in the life of the Danube Cup community, he spoke about his personal mission, the future of DC, why such international collaborations are important, and what benefits the membership could bring to his university, OTH Regensburg.  

• What is your personal mission regarding the Danube Cup initiative?

The Danube Cup Initiative is something that we all do without much of extra funding, but from the bottom of our hearts. I want to continue this style of high level personal commitment among our members, maintaining familiarity and exchange. We are a truly European initiative, and we are all located at the bank of the same river. Like the Danube’s water is in continuous flow, I want our consortium to be on a continuous development.

Our focus should be output oriented: What do we actually contribute to the start-ups and the entrepreneurial culture at our universities, at each place along the river and jointly together, with our practical activities, our teaching and with our research? Do we create an emotional mindset of mutual collegiality along the river Danube? For us and for our students?

At the same time, we must not become self-centric, self-referral, and bureaucratic, since we don’t have any grant providing authority in our back. Let us experience this freedom and make the best out of it! We should see this as an opportunity for efficiency, output-centricity and stakeholder orientation. And the most important stakeholders are our students and their startup initiatives.   

• Why do you think such international collaborations are important?

In a way, we are competitors and colleagues at the same time. Each University has ambitions, is fighting for student enrolments and academic profile. But we also have a higher purpose: helping students to develop entrepreneurial skills and self-efficacy, creating an entrepreneurial culture in our spaces, and searching for informative or even instructive truth via entrepreneurship research. Each institutions could try doing all this just by itself, aggressively in competition and isolated, or we could – and we do – apply a cooperative approach, where we all jointly benefit, achieve much better outcomes, and even have fun together in what we are doing.

For our students, it is important to learn how to compete in the European market, which technically is a single market but still has considerable differences in customer culture, needs and preferences. Also, students need encouragement to understand the potential of the European Single Market for their own start-up activities. The European experience that we deliver for our students is invaluable.    

• How do you see the future of DC?

With the leadership board, I agree that we want the network to continue in slow and methodological growth along the river, and we want to maintain the familiarity of all colleagues involved. Passion for entrepreneurship will remain the entrance fee to the DC network.

We also have to acknowledge that partners are more or less strong in entrepreneurship and have different financial budgets. Despite those differences, everyone who is passionate about entrepreneurship should have his or her place in the DC, on equal terms with each other member.

As we grow, we also need to care for quality. How can we ensure high quality in research, teaching and in practical support for our start-ups? This might lead to an opportunity for a third pillar, a personal and institutional development pillar consisting of workshops, which could be aligned with the Cup and the research conference.

• Why do you find it important that OTH Regensburg is part of this community?

At OTH Regensburg we really love this unique community. We can contribute a lot to the DC, but we also gain a lot. For our students who have participated in a DC final, this is an outstanding memory. There is also a historical component: Look in the past centuries, how many conflicts and wars have shaken the Danube region? How many humans have suffered or lost their freedom? And now we peacefully collaborate and have fun together while working on a common higher mission, i.e. providing opportunities for our students and our research talents. Isn’t that a European miracle?

Dr. Sassmannshausen, congratulations once again to your new post, and thank you very much for the interview!