Dear Participants,
On behalf of all partner universities, it is my pleasure to welcome you to our 11th Global Entrepreneurship Summer School! In collaboration with our partners, GESS will be held in Munich, Mexico City, Shanghai and Cape Town. We are thrilled that you are one of THE 140 top notch students from around the globe! And let me tell you, you’re doing something that’s really important!
During GESS, you are going to meet like-minded peers, you will identify opportunities within your GESS location and you will come up with feasible, scalable and impact-driven solutions.
This year’s topic is consumption. Take this opportunity to foster change, by looking innovatively at the defined challenges of consumption during the next 7 days AND afterwards. The challenges of consumption are broad, comprising current issues such as waste generation - while at the same time, production processes consume large amounts of commodities and energy. With this in mind, we eagerly await this year’s business solutions to global consumption challenges. We hope your time is filled with new experiences and inspiration to foster societal change!
Dear Participants,
On behalf of Tecnológico de Monterrey, I want to warmly welcome you all to the Global Entrepreneurship Summer School (GESS). We are glad to host this amazing experience for the third year, and we hope that GESS becomes a life-changing event for you as an agent of change and that boosts your entrepreneurial mindset for shaping a better world.
With GESS, the EGL Entrepreneurship Institute fulfills its mission of encouraging and developing an entrepreneurial spirit, with humanistic outlook and global outreach, which are values cornerstones of our University.
We wish you a wonderful experience at your respective locations and, if you join us, a pleasant stay in Mexico City and at Tecnológico de Monterrey. We hope that you have a very prolific and amazing experience with all your international peers, mentors and entrepreneurs. Now you are part of the GESS community.
Dear Participants,
On behalf of Tongji University, it is a great honor to be involved in the Global Entrepreneurship Summer School again. Shanghai is one of the most prosperous metropolitan regions in Asia and we are excited to receive students from different cultural backgrounds with different entrepreneurial and impactful ideas on the food challenge. We cordially welcome you to Tongji University, one of the first Chinese universities to focus on innovation and entrepreneurial education and also to Venture Valley, the entrepreneurial platform on campus which supports startup teams in realizing their venture dreams. The consumption challenge provides the chance to learn, and grow while generating an impact on society. We invite you as talented youth to shine at Venture Valley, at Tongji University and here in Shanghai. We hope you will enjoy our beautiful city and share fantastic moments with the other students of the Global Entrepreneurship Summer School.
Dear Participants,
LifeCo UnLtd would like to welcome you on this journey with us for the first ever Global Entrepreneurship Summer School in Cape Town, an African tipping point for social innovation! It is an honour for us to host this gathering of talented individuals from developing and emerging countries around a common challenge: consumption. There is a global movement - fuelled by increased inequality, environmental degradation and the growing unsettledness of the world’s youth – that has led to the collaborative efforts of various elements of society to address these systemic challenges.
Within this context, GESS will challenge you to seek opportunities where others see obstacles, development where others see regress, and innovation where others see stagnation. We hope this profound experience will bring you the purpose you are looking for as a young future leader of our time. The only toolkit you will need is empathy, reflectiveness, willingness to collaborate, energy and determination. We look forward to walking this path with you. It may be a start, but this journey has no end. It is hopefully a constant work in progress; a continuous process of practice, reflection and refinement.
Getting ready for GESS 2018
Seven challenging days of fun, teamwork and innovative solutions!
"During GESS I experienced the highest concentration of bright international minds in the room ever. Unbelievable!" GESS Participant
Remember why you applied for GESS 2018? Here is a little reminder:
For the first time, GESS is taking place on four continents in four different cities. Mexico City, Cape Town, Shanghai and Munich will host this year's edition about consumption. Sustainable consumption and production are some of the major challenges of our time. Entrepreneurial solutions from innovative, creative and enthusiastic students like you are needed to solve the issues surrounding the challenges of consumerism in a rapidly growing society. During the course of one week, you will be working on the following seven subtopics:
- #Environment - Due to expanding economic activities, growing population, and climate change, we risk the deterioration of our environment.
- #Culture - Our consumption pattern is a part in our everyday live. Changing it requires a massive cultural overhaul.
- #Production - We don’t only consume a product, but the commodities that enabled the production as such.
- #Global Food Consumption - To feed our growing world population, global food consumption consequently affects the environment through food-related energy consumption.
- #Waste - A vast majority of the waste we produce is not being recycled but ends up in landfills, the ocean or gets burned.
Below, you can find your location's local subtopics that you will address during GESS in addition to the global topics above:
The GESS Program
Your start into the global entrepreneurial journey
At GESS you will be taken on an unforgettable learning journey. Together with your team, you will pass through all stages of innovation and the development of sustainable business ideas. From defining your challenge and vision to the creation of your first prototype to the final pitches at the closing ceremony. And no worries, this will not be a linear process, but you will experience the ups and downs of an entrepreneurial learning journey. In that way, each day you will come one step closer to solving the challenges you are passionate about.
"GESS is the experiential lab for entrepreneurs: you learn, you make mistakes, you do, you undo and you make lifelong connections." GESS Participant
Meet the GESS Mexico City Participants of 2018
Meet Reyno Stol | Feng Zhong Ting | Phillip Plessmann | Maria Jose Monteagudo | Daniel Partida | Zyanya Sharon Vizcarra Chavez
Meet Siyi Wang | Konrad Wirmer | Andreas Schalueck | Mariana Santana | Lucia Ruiz Haddad
Meet the GESS Cape Town Participants of 2018
Meet Alfonso de los Rios | Alice Sant'Anna | Ami Zou | Angela Honegger | Cherezaan Ryklief | Daphane Pillay
Meet Claudio Antonio Klaus Junior | Denise Freyberg | Dominik Etissa Debissa | Erika Castillo | Gugulethu Radebe | Hemelton Tiisetso Mokoena
Meet Julia Adeline Gimenez | Julius Kiting'ati | Katharina Körber | Khumoetsile Tsintsing | Lesego Kobuwe | Lucky Vele
Meet Lulama Maqubela | Maraka Lefera | Milica Milovanovic | Muhammad Raafay Siddiqui | Regina Treutwein | Ricarda Marleen Riedl
Meet Riko Hamblin | Sandra Knöpfle | Sarah Huemer | Shaban Cekrezi | Shivi Jindal | Simona Grande
Meet Stanley Nkhumeleni | Yousra Jali | Zhang Zhuoran | Alea Lasu | Chenxi Zhao
Meet the GESS Shanghai Participants of 2018
Meet Fenny Alfionnita | Filip Koprčina | Hager Safwat | Haykaz Nahapetyan | Iva Fabris | Jenny To
Meet Jonathan Garcia | Jorge Nunez | Julia Christ | Justin Bitterlich | Lara Elena Thiele | Lebohang Booi
Meet Lisolethu Makaula | Marcos Bruno | Martina Trott Kalikoski | Nikhil Jain | Parnian Faqiryar | Paulina Dubas
Meet Sara Majid | Sebastián Astudillo | Sebastián Ruano | Simon Pangihutan Simorangkir | Stefano Negrini | Toan Nguyen Thi
Meet Zhang Xingtao | Zhang Luomeng | Zheng Yuxin | Leopold Konzett
Meet the GESS Munich Participants of 2018
Meet Yuka Egashira | Georgios Kamaras | Georgios Chatziioannou | Hakar Saber | Isaac Osei Appiah | Julia Mittermüller
Meet Saif Eddine Laalej | Xiaoli Wu | Shaina Ahsan | Theresa Musiol | Timothy Onafuwa | Lucía Deschamps
International Team
Meet our international GESS team from Mexico City, Cape Town, Shanghai and Munich.
Meet the Strascheg Center for Entrepreneurship
The Strascheg Center for Entrepreneurship (SCE) of the Munich University of Applied Sciences (MUAS) offers training and research programs in the field of entrepreneurship, and encourages innovation processes and the development of entrepreneurial personalities.
SCE supports business start-ups from science and guides young businesses from idea development to marketable innovation.
In this way, SCE actively contributes to shaping the future of our society and to establishing a comprehensive start-up culture. SCE was founded in 2002 as an affiliated institute of the MUAS. In July 2011, SCE and MUAS became one of the six EXIST Start-Up Universities in Germany.
Meet the UnternehmerTUM
UnternehmerTUM offers founders and startups a complete service from the initial idea to IPO. A team of experienced entrepreneurs, managers and investors supports founders with the development of their products, services and business models. The experts accompany them actively with building up their companies, market entry and financing – also via Venture Capital.
UnternehmerTUM was founded in 2002 by the entrepreneur Susanne Klatten. With more than 50 high-growth technology start-ups each year and its unique offering, it is the leading center for business creation in Germany.
Meet the LMU Entrepreneurship Center
The LMU Entrepreneurship Center (LMU EC) of the Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich promotes entrepreneurship as a driving force of the knowledge economy. It is a recognized center of excellence and one of the world’s leading research and teaching institutions.
The LMU EC empowers tomorrow’s entrepreneurial leaders, stimulates the creation of successful ventures and promotes a culture of entrepreneurship–across all LMU faculties and beyond.
The different institutions of the LMU EC offer entrepreneurship courses and follow-up support for students, graduates and scientists on their path towards funding new businesses. By now it is has supported more than 235 start-ups in establishing their business.
Meet the Entrepreneurship Institute Eugenio Garza Lagüera
The Tecnológico de Monterrey mission is to prepare internationally competitive leaders who have an “entrepreneurial spirit” and a humanistic outlook.
In order to ensure that all students at the university uncover and grow their entrepreneurial spirit, the Tecnológico de Monterrey created the “Entrepreneurship Institute Eugenio Garza Lagüera” responsible for cultivating and developing entrepreneurial competencies and attitudes in our students, supporting the creation and development of start-ups and businesses in our community, and advancing the research on entrepreneurship as an academic discipline.
The Tecnológico de Monterrey has always been a supportive partner of the Global Entrepreneurship Summer School since its establishment in the year 2008.
Meet LifeCo UnLtd
LifeCo UnLtd is a social enterprise, established over 2 decades ago during the times of segregation and marginalisation in South Africa. The enterprise focuses on 2 key elements: entrepreneurial education for youth, and entrepreneur development. It finds, funds and invests in emerging social entrepreneurs to expand their impact and access to market.
It facilitates programs focused on critical thinking, capital and entrepreneurial practice to schools and universities and is an active advocate for social impact – the organization is strategically placed to guide policy direction in South Africa and is a global influencer in the sector.
LifeCo UnLtd is also a global advocate for impact enterprise and impact investment and a founding member of the Global Social Entrepreneurship Network (GSEN).
The partnership with LifeCo bundles and introduces eight South African Universities to the GESS initiative – significantly increasing GESS’s University presence. This year, GESS Cape Town will be located at the University of the Western Cape.
Meet the Tongji Venture Valley
Tongji Venture Valley selects student entrepreneurship projects to promote innovation-based entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship-oriented innovation to cover more teachers, students and disciplines.
Tongji Venture Valley actively motivates companies to participate, bring in market resources and boost the combination of industry and education to achieve the goal that companies and the government could resort to Tongji Venture Valley when struggling with difficult problems or when having projects to be incubated.
Tongji Venture Valley associates with the existing work of relative departments of teaching administration, asset management, industry development and Tongji Science Park to complete the last kilometer project from university campus to science park.
In Memory of
In 2008, it was a bold move by the Directors of the four Munich-based University Entrepreneurship Centers to launch a joint summer school to find entrepreneurial solutions to the world's greatest problems.
Without Prof. Bernhard Katzy's visionary work, the Global Entrepreneurship Summer School (GESS) would never have become a reality. Bernhard was the kind of forward-thinking professor needed to blaze a trail and accomplish something off the beaten track. As a critical thinker, as a cross-sectoral expert, as one who truly exemplified the word "partnership", and as a man with friends, students and education at heart, he used his academic network from around the world to move the organization smoothly and effectively through uncharted waters. Expanding GESS to Mexico, China and South Africa is a step Bernhard had predicted from the beginning. He wanted GESS to be truly global, both in participants and venues.
We feel the loss of Bernhard most deeply when we need unconventional advice or a risk-taking decision maker and in those challenging moments, our memory of his visionary passion gives us the strength, inspiration and clarity to continue. Professor Katzy passed away in November 2015 – we miss him dearly and carry him in our hearts and in the spirit of GESS always.
Sincerely,
The GESS Team & Board