Courses

Academic Level: 400

Online lecture with guest lecturers, group work and "inverted classroom" with digital learning materials (videos, articles, external content)

8 ECTS Credits (200 hours per semester), 5 hours per week (58 hours per semester)

NGU reserves the right to cancel this course if it has not enrolled enough students before the beginning of the course's instruction.

offered in spring/summer

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Marc Ringel

This module consists of the following parts:

Sustainable Development Governance (interactive lecture):

• SDG7 – Clean and affordable energy (renewable energies and energy efficiency)
• SDG 17 – Partnerships for Sustainability: Transition management strategies
• SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities & Communities

European Affairs (interactive lecture) – SDG 16:

• Understanding “governance”: Policy strategies and measures
• Lobbying at EU level
• EU institutions and their role in the political process
• Political decision making process and possibilities to influence them

Climate Change Policies (online learning module and seminar) – SDG 13:

• International climate policies
• European and international emission trading schemes
• Economic instruments for mitigating greenhouse gases and adapt to global warming

Students in this module will be able to:

• Analyse and explain international sustainability and climate change policies
• Use lobbying methods to strategically interact real life with decision-makers
• Actively participate in on-going debates and exchanges on energy and climate matters
• Contribute to decision making in the climate, energy and resource fields at European and international level
• Take up job assignments with industry associations and NGOs at international level and work effectively in a multi-cultural surrounding

Literature: United Nations (2020): Take Action for the Sustainable Development Goals. UN: New York
Hardacre, A., (2021): How the EU Institutions Work and How to Work with the EU Institutions, 2nd ed., John Harper, London
Ringel, M; Pittel, K.; Rübbelke, D; Vögele, S.; Ball, C.; Stahlke, T. (2021): International Climate Policy and Economic Perspectives. In: Dirk Rübbelke (Eds.): Handbook of Climate Change Mitigation. Cham: Springer

Assessment: Written exam
Prerequisite: Economics (intermediate level)
Undergraduate students, Graduate students

Academic Level: 400

Lecture, 3 ECTS Credits (75 hours per semester), 2 hours per week (25 hours per semester)

This course cannot be taken together with the following courses: 204-035-IO-01 Sustainability Management and 101-115-IO Marketing and Sustainability

offered in spring/summer

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Robert Gabriel

This class deals with the following topics:
Chapter 1 Introduction: Companies & Sustainability
(Sustainability drivers, business impact, value chain perspective)
Chapter 2 Sustainability Reporting
(GRI Standard, Credibility of Reports / Greenwashing, Materiality)
Chapter 3 Sustainability Performance Management
(Corporate Sustainability, Software Tools, Supply Chain Sustainability)

Assessment: Written exam
Prerequisite: Background in Business/Economics
Undergraduate students, Graduate students

Academic Level: 400

Lecture, 4,5 ECTS Credits (112,5 hours per semester), 3 hours per week (35 hours per semester)

offered in spring/summer, fall/winter

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Robert Gabriel

The students understand the relevance and the challenges of innovation management. They learn basic approaches and methods that are typically applied, and are enabled to apply some of the concepts in smaller exercises. The students see how companies implement innovation management in practice, and further understand methods and approaches to develop more sustainable products and process technologies, including a broad number of examples and case studies. This course deals with the following topics:
-    Defintions and some key statistics
-    Influence of strategy and culture
-    Life cycles and innovation management models
-    Innovation management process
-    Sustainable innovation

Students will have to decide whether they take the class 101-120-IO-01 or the class 102-040-IO-02. Students cannot take both classes.

Assessment: written exam, coursework project (presenation, paper)
Prerequisite: Background in Business/Economics
Undergraduate students, Graduate students

Academic Level: 400

Lecture, 1,5 ECTS Credits (37,5 hours per semester), 1 hour per week (15 hours per semester)

offered in spring/summer, fall/winter

Lecturer: Matthias Schulz

This course deals with the following topics:
1. Sustainability – the bigger picture: Overview of current environmental issues; Sustainability: what does it mean and essential perspectives; Economic growth and sustainable development – an irresolvable conflict? Transformation steps to a postgrowth economy
2. and 3. Measurement and communication of products‘ environmental performance: Life cycle thinking and life cycle management, Introduction to life cycle assessment (the methodology and a case study), Communicating the environmental performance of products with the help of eco-labels

Assessment: written exam

Prerequisite: Background in Business/Economics
Undergraduate students, Graduate students

Academic Level: 400

Lecture, 3 ECTS Credits (75 hours per semester), 2 hours per week (25 hours per semester)

offered in spring/summer, fall/winter

Lecturer: Wolfgang Schroter

Students will become familiar with various tasks involved in founding a company. They know how to deal with the respective complexity. They are able to comprehend the stages of a growing company. Students learn how to deal with critical situations. They can understand Sustainable Management as an important corporate goal. The development of a company is illustrated with a concrete example:
-    Tasks and challenges during the foundation phase
-    Orientation towards corporate goals
-    Ensuring healthy growth
-    Internationalization and competition
-    Dealing with internal and external crisis
-    Responsibility for company and employees

This course is held in form of a case study with discussions and group work.

Assessment: Oral exam
Prerequisite: Background in Business/Economics
Undergraduate students, Graduate students

Academic Level: 400

Lecture, 3 ECTS Credits (75 hours per semester), 2 hours per week (25 hours per semester)

offered in spring/summer, fall/winter

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Robert Gabriel

The students understand the relevance and the challenges of innovation management. They learn basic approaches and methods that are typically applied, and are enabled to apply some of the concepts in smaller exercises. The students see how companies implement innovation management in practice, and further understand methods and approaches to develop more sustainable products and process technologies, including a broad number of examples and case studies. This course deals with the following topics:
-    Defintions and some key statistics
-    Influence of strategy and culture
-    Life cycles and innovation management models
-    Innovation management process
-    Sustainable innovation

Students will have to decide whether they take the class 101-120-IO-01 or the class 102-040-IO-02. Students cannot take both classes.

Assessment: Oral exam
Prerequisite: Background in Business/Economics
Undergraduate students, Graduate students

Academic Level: 400

Lecture, 6 ECTS Credits (150 hours per semester), 4 hours per week (45 hours per semester)

offered in spring/summer, fall/winter

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Erskin Blunck, Prof. Dr. Christian Arndt

Learn - Create - Change: Create and develop startup-ready concepts - from innovative ideas to a sustainable Business Model Canvas.
Develop - Test - Implement: Be inspired by the opportunity to take action for sustainable development with future-oriented startups. Contribute effective innovations and transform existing products and services. You will learn to create and develop your own ideas into a feasible and sustainable business model. By actively going through the business creation process you will apply key techniques and develop the necessary skills to create a sucessful and sustainable business. The focus is thereby on critical and creative thinking techniques, customer discovery and rapid evaluation of business potential of technologies and ideas. Finally, the business model canvas will be formulated and presented to a professional audience at a final pitch event. Benefit from professional mentoring by our experts, individual feedback and hands-on activities. In this module, teams will learn and work in small and diverse startup groups with students from all faculties. Zukunft.Gründen is a new startup supporting project of HfWU and is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy under the scheme of EXIST, and collaborates with Contact-AS and G-INNO. Contents:
• Problem definition: need for transformation, SDGs
• Idea creation: creativity techniques
• Startup Know-How: Entrepreneurship, Design Thinking, Foresight thinking, Risk Management
• Idea validation: market potential, customer discovery, financing strategies, Business Model Canvas

Assessment: Coursework project (Business model prototype, presentations, final pitch)
Prerequisite: Background in Business / Economics, Management (intermediate level), willingness to co-create and interact with other purpose-driven participants
Undergraduate students, Graduate students

Academic Level: 400

Lecture, 6 ECTS Credits (150 hours per semester), 4 hours per week (45 hours per semester)

offered in spring/summer, fall/winter

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Graf, Alan Riefert, Lukas Adams

The module Business Concept includes aspects of sustainable entrepreneurship and deals with the following topics:
Sources of early stage financing: Individuals / Founders, retained earnings, bank borrowing, government sources, stock market (methods of new issues, types of underwriting), Venture Capital (VC), crowdfunding, innovation financing
Forms of venture capital: Business angels, venture capital funds, corporate venturing, incubators: key considerations in choosing a venture capitalist, evaluation activities carried out by venture capitalists
Financing Process: Process steps, obstacles
Evaluation Process: Business and company evaluation.
In addition to the classroom lecture experts and practitioners from industry present real life cases and best practices. Different industries, tasks and financing volumes shall help to prepare for the own case. Furthermore, students are expected to bring their own business idea forward and prepare for financing options.

Assessment: Presentation
Prerequisites: Intermediate level in Business/Finance/Economics
Undergraduate students, Graduate students

Academic Level: 400

Lecture, 6 ECTS Credits (150 hours per semester), 4 hours per week (45 hours per semester)

offered in spring/summer, fall/winter

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Andreas Schittenhelm, Leonardo Minoia MSc.

Students in this class are able to develop a financial business plan in Excel and are able to judge the profitability of an own venture. This course includes aspects of sustainable entrepreneurship and deals with the following topics: Business Planning, Financial Planning, Cash Flows, Profitability, Risk Management.

Assessment: Paper
Prerequisites: Intermediate level in Business/Finance/Economics, Excel
Undergraduate students, Graduate students

Academic Level: 400

5 Lectures, 24 ECTS Credits (600 hours per semester), 16 hours per week (180 hours per semester)

offered in spring/summer, fall/winter

Lecturers: Dr. Wolfgang Schroter, Prof. Dr. Robert Gabriel, Prof. Dr. Andreas Schittenhelm, Prof. Dr. Serge Ragotzky, Prof. Dr. Graf, Süleyman Torasan, M.Sc.

This program covers the following parts: 102-040-IO-01 Entrepreneurship, 102-040-IO-02 Innovation Management, 102-041 Business Creation-Start-up, 102-042 Business Concept, 102-043 Financial Business Planning. Students become familiar with the various tasks involved in starting a business. They know how to deal with the respective complexity and are able to comprehend the phases of a growing company. The students learn how to deal with critical situations. They are able to understand sustainable management as an important corporate goal. Upon successful completion of all 5 graded parts, students will receive a participation certificate at the end.

Assessment: Oral exams, coursework project, presentation, paper
Prerequisite: Background in Business/Economics
Undergraduate students, Graduate students

Academic Level: 400

Seminar, 8 ECTS Credits (200 hours per semester), 6 hours per week (70 hours per semester)
Weekly online-sessions and 2 additional design workshops (if possible, face-to-face) with a company partner, self-directed project work, and active participation in our full day design workshops

offered in spring/summer, fall/winter

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Sebastian H.D. Fiedler

The main interest of this module is the acquisition of a range of methods and concepts from “User Experience Design” (UX). The field of User Experience Design is a conceptual design discipline. It focuses on the interaction between human users/actors, machines & devices, (user-)interfaces, and the contextual environments of particular activities. With the proliferation of computers and networked devices in work and life, user experience has become an increasingly significant concern for the design of products, services, and (user) interfaces within the unfolding digital transformation. User Experience Design is a multi-disciplinary field and includes elements of user research, interaction design, information architecture, applied psychology, and other disciplines. It is thus accessible for students from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds.

The course is very hands-on and project driven.
If possible, we try to coordinate our project work in collaboration with a company partner.

Contents:
• what is User Experience Design (UX)?
• selected methods and tools for User Experience Design and User Research
• concepts of applied psychology in UX
• the role of User Experience Design for business innovation
• the rise of the Experience Economy

Assessment: Presentations, project report
Prerequisite: English as working language (oral & written)
Undergraduate students, Graduate students

Academic Level: 500

Online lecture + Community Project, 6 ECTS Credits (150 hours per semester), 4 hours per week (45 hours per semester)

offered in spring/summer

Lecturer: Dr. Ellen Fetzer

Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship is a programme offered by a 4-University Consortium in cooperation with relevant NGOs. The goal is to empower future changemakers through an interdisciplinary, problem-based learning environment that enhances the innovative competencies needed for addressing social, cultural and environmental challenges. A social entrepreneur applies business tools for solving social and environmental problems. Success in social entrepreneurship is primarily measured by degree of social impact, not only monetary profit. Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship includes live sessions on the internet available to the wider global community, as well as interdisciplinary and international group work with students from Romania, Estonia, the Netherlands and other European countries. The programme offers students the possibility to receive an attractive travel grant to attend 10-day workshops in Romania or Estonia. The online module consists of twelve 90-minute sessions of lectures, reading materials, collaborative group work and other diverse active and passive learning tools. The thematic elements of the course are designed to give students core knowledge for developing community-based social innovation. The online course will built up theoretical knowledge around community-based innovation, social entrepreneurship, and its European and global context. In parallel, the Nürtingen students will follow a collaboration process with citizens and stakeholders. Together with the Nürtingen community, we will build social business ideas in response to local challenges and needs. Registration link and further information: http://www.localchange.eu

Assessment: Coursework project (paper + presentation)
Prerequisite: a good level of English is required
Undergraduate students, Graduate students

Academic Level: 500

Seminar, 3 ECTS Credits (75 hours per semester), 2 hours per week (25 hours per semester)

offered in spring/summer, fall/winter

Lecturer: Benjamin Höhl, B.Sc.

This course is offered as a simulation game. It requires direct participation of the students and involves them directly in the process of taking management decisions in an interactive style. The students receive a short introduction into the related knowledge areas. From then on they work together in teams. Each team acts as a management board of a company. The teams have to take various decisions according to different developments and situations that occur in successive decision cycles. The simulation provides an inside look in the interdependency of management decisions, as well as the insight that success of a company does not only depend on own decisions but also on the strategy and activity of its competitors.

Assessment: Written exam, coursework project (presentation)
Prerequisite: Background in Business / Economics
Undergraduate students with special permission (number of Undergraduates is limited to 6), Graduate students

Academic Level: 500

Seminar, 2 ECTS Credits (50 hours per semester), 2 hours per week (25 hours per semester)

offered in spring/summer, fall/winter

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Erskin Blunck

The students will get an introduction to Business Administration and get an overview about selected management theories and concepts. The course will introduce to the Business Environment, Business Ownership and Entrepreneurship as well as Management and Organization. Basic principles of Human Resources and Marketing and will be put into the context of General Management. The course will enable the students to set-up strategic plan with its specific components. Participants will understand the opportunities and limitations of planning and management techniques. Students will be able to apply management techniques. They learn how to express a well-founded and independent opinion regarding general management issues. Students will develop an answer for the corporate responsibility for society and environment.Students will understand the interdependencies between various functions of a company, e.g. marketing, sales, controlling and finance. This leads to a comprehensive understanding of the functioning of a company as a whole.The course aims at a comprehensive understanding of management on company level and general principles of business administration. Concept General Management has a focus on key concepts of business administration with respect to general management.

Assessment: Written exam
Prerequisite: Background in Business / Economics
Undergraduate students with special permission (number of Undergraduates is limited to 6), Graduate students

Academic Level: 500

Lecture, 2 ECTS Credits (50 hours per semester), 2 hours per week (25 hours per semester)

offered in spring/summer, fall/winter

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Sebastian H.D. Fiedler

This lecture provides basic knowledge on Organizational Theories and structures, Information Management and Human Resource Management. It enables the students to manage changes in organizations. Broad overview on the impact of IT.

Assessment: Written exam
Prerequisite: Management (intermediate level)
Undergraduate students with special permission (number of Undergraduates is limited to 6), Graduate students

Academic Level: 500

Lecture, 3 ECTS Credits (75 hours per semester), 2 hours per week (25 hours per semester)

offered in spring/summer, fall/winter

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Friedemann Baisch

This course offers training in project management skills. Students will receive training of project management methods, following the IPMA-Model (methods for initiating, planning, executing, controlling and closing projects). In a second step the course focuses on the training of their soft skills (personal vision, motivation, communication) and leadership.

Assessment: Coursework project (presentation)
Prerequisite: Background in Business / Economics, Management (intermediate level)
Undergraduate students with special permission (number of Undergraduates is limited to 6), Graduate students

Academic Level: 500

Seminar, 2 ECTS Credits (50 hours per semester), 2 hours per week (25 hours per semester)

offered in spring/summer, fall/winter

Lecturer: Uwe Jankowiak

The course provides a structured and comprehensive approach to the fundamental principles and practice of Supply Chain Management and Purchasing: Students will know the challenges leading to the integrated approach of SCM, Information systems and technology in SCM. They learn the models and methods of Supply Chain Management. They get familiar with the managing processes and the role of Purchasing in Supply Chains.

Assessment: Written exam
Prerequisite: Background in Business / Economics, Introductory class in Management
Undergraduate students with special permission (number of Undergraduates is limited to 6), Graduate students

Academic Level: 500

Lecture, 5 ECTS Credits (125 hours per semester), 3 hours per week (35 hours per semester)

offered in spring/summer, fall/winter

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Erskin Blunck

This course offers the students a detailed definition of „Strategic Direction, Business Transformation“. This term includes aspects like “Strategy Process”, “Strategy Content” and “Strategy Context” that are carefully distinguished in the lecture. To expand the theoretical frame the course explores the issues of “Organizational Purpose” and “Strategic change management”. The students will analyze certain case studies in which the constituent parts of the lecture will be applied. Case Studies from the current business environment complete the coursework. Based on short original readings, the students will present opposing views about the mentioned strategy perspectives and discuss in class room.

Assessment: Written exam, presentation
Prerequisite: Background in Business / Economics, Management (intermediate level)
Undergraduate students with special permission (number of Undergraduates is limited to 6), Graduate students

Academic Level: 400

Lecture, 2 ECTS Credits (75 hours per semester), 2 hours per week (25 hours per semester)

offered in spring/summer, fall/winter

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Horst Blumenstock

This course deals with the following topics: Introduction in strategy and strategic management, Corporate values and goals, Internal analysis: core competencies and business flexibility, External analysis: the competitive environment, Competitive advantage: generic strategy and strategy directions, Strategic implementation and management, International and global strategies

Assessment: Written exam, presentations, paper
Prerequisite: Background in Business/Economics, Introductory class in Management
Undergraduate students, Graduate students

Academic Level: 500

Lecture, 3 ECTS Credits (62,5 hours per semester), 2 hours per week (25 hours per semester)

offered in spring/summer, fall/winter

Lecturer: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Reinhold Bopp M.S.

This course is offered within the Master Degree Program “Automotive Management”. The following subject areas will be covered by the lecture: Framework of Product Development in the Automotive Industry, Innovation and R&D-Management, Creativity and Knowledge Management, Project Management, Product Development Organization, Vehicle Development and Product Evolution Process, Phases of the Product Evolution Process, Virtual Car Process, Integration Processes, Target Management, Release and Change Management, Quality Management, Primary and Secondary Complete Vehicle Characteristics, Integration of Partners and Suppliers, Development Controlling, Lean Development

Assessment: Written exam
Prerequisite: Background in Business/Economics, Marketing, Management, Finance and Accounting (all intermediate level)
Undergraduate students, Graduate students