We cordially congratulate Dr. Rainer Minz on his appointment as honorary professor at the WiSo faculty of the University of Cologne on August 8, 2019.
Rainer Minz has been committed to the faculty for more than 30 years. First, after his doctorate in the winter term of 1987, for five years as a lecturer at the University of Cologne. He interrupted this activity when he joined the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) as a manager in 1991.
After 25 years of successful service, he left BCG in April 2015 as Senior Partner. Rainer Minz, still a Senior Advisor to the global management consultancy, was now able to return to his Alma Mater to reactivate his teaching position at the Wiso Faculty.
In October 2017, he also assumed the role of Rectorate Representative for Alumni, Fundraising and Transfer. In this function, he has achieved considerable success for our university in recent years. Our alumni membership, for example, has since grown by around 4,000 to over 60,000.
In fundraising, Rainer Minz played a key role in the establishment of the new Cologne University Foundation, which now has a donation volume of around 40 million euros. He played a decisive role in the orientation of the transfer strategy towards the establishment of start-ups by students and doctoral candidates. In 2015 the university opened its "Gateway" incubator, co-founded the Cologne digital hub in 2016 and InsurLab Germany in 2017. In January 2019, the University of Cologne received a grant of around 25 million euros as "Excellence Startup Cluster NRW" by NRW Innovation Minister Andreas Pinkwart, distributed over five years. The University of Cologne and the WiSo Faculty in particular have thus become an essential factor in the booming Cologne start-up ecosystem.
Consequently, Rainer Minz also shifted his teaching activities from auditing to strategic management and entrepreneurship. With these topics in mind, he now works for the new Endowed Chair for Interdisciplinary Management Science (Prof. Schwens), as well as for the Executive Business School.
On the initiative of the university, after 10 years of teaching, Dr. Rainer Minz has now been nominated for an honorary professorship. The title was officially awarded to him by the Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, Prof. Dr. Ulrich Thonemann, on 3 September 2019. "I am very pleased about this award and thank you very much for the trust you have placed in me," said the newly appointed Prof. Dr. Rainer Minz.
Master students can attend Prof. Minz's Englisch held courses in English at the Business School (winter term) and as a Business Project Course called "Build your own Business" in the summer term. "It is enriching to teach young people the entrepreneurial skills they need today, even in companies," says Prof. Dr. Rainer Minz. "In this way we support the Cologne start-up ecosystem and can differentiate ourselves from other universities.
• Rainer Minz - curriculum vitae (Cologne University Foundation)