Prof. Dietmar Harhoff

Class @Collège: Venture Lab

Professor Dietmar Harhoff is Director of the Max Planck Institut and President of the think tank „Innovation“ of the German Government. Due to this position, he publishes every year the renowned innovation report about the future of Germany.

After graduating from Harvard University, where he studied business economics, he entered the doctoral programme at the Sloan School of Business at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His doctoral thesis analyzed research incentives in vertically related industries. In 1991, he joined the newly founded Centre for European Economic Research (Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung - ZEW) in Mannheim where he served as Senior Research Fellow and - since 1995 - as Associate Director. Dietmar Harhoff held visiting positions at MIT and the Social Science Research Center (Wissenschaftszentrum für Sozialforschung - WZB) in Berlin, and in 1998 assumed the position as Director of the Institute for Innovation Research and Technology Management (INNO-tec) at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich. He was also Director of the ODEON Center for Entrepreneurship and Member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM) in Munich.

At the Collège des Ingénieurs, he leades the Venture Lab, a lecture which introduces entrepreneurial thinking. It includes an important practical part: the scouting of new relevant technologies. The fellows of the Collège deal with market chances and potential clients in a highly practice-oriented way of learning.