Tomorrow's bosses: More than 70 interested people learned about business succession at the #Youngstarts Digi Meet

Implementing and shaping, leading employees, taking responsibility, having visions: For Melanie Baum, this is part of being an entrepreneur. She was not the only one to appear virtually in front of the 70 or so participants at the #Youngstarts Business Succession Digi Meet on Thursday. In addition, other exciting personalities spoke and discussed about how a company succession works - and of course also about how to drive such a succession to the wall in any case. The invitation was issued by the joint project Gründergeist #Youngstarts Münsterland, which wanted to use the online event to provide information on the topic of business succession and attract more potential successors.

"There is so much potential in business succession," emphasised Frank Sibbing, head of the project Gründergeist #Youngstarts Münsterland. "It is estimated that around 3000 businesses will be available for handover in Münsterland between 2018 and 2022, and more and more businesses are not finding a successor. We want to take countermeasures. And that works best with reports from practice." There were plenty of these during the online event. Together with Melanie Baum, owner of Baum Zerspanungstechnik, Johannes Austermann, boss of Scala Filmtheater in Warendorf, and André Schulze Forsthövel, company successor at Brandschutz-Center Münster Brinck, sat on the digital podium and told their own succession stories. The evening was moderated by freelance journalist Andrea Hansen.

But an excursion into theory was not to be missed either. Tax consultant Santina John gave a detailed presentation on how not to do things when taking over a company. Prof. Tobias Dauth and Prof. Alexander Lahmann from the Leipzig Graduate School of Management also spoke about trends and challenges of business succession. "There is no one key to success," said Katharina Stemmer, project manager at Gründergeist #Youngstarts Münsterland. "Sometimes the succession takes place within the family, sometimes it is an external takeover."

This was also demonstrated by the talk participants. Johannes Austermann, for example, ventured from the bank into the cinema, André Schulze Forsthövel got to know his future company thanks to a referral from the IHK Nord Westfalen. And Melanie Baum had already played as a child in the shavings of the company that her father Hans-Peter Baum founded in 1983 and which she eventually took over. "For me, succession includes: fun in entrepreneurship, joy in creating, a lot of responsibility, but also so much freedom," emphasised Baum, who was named Business Successor of the Year this year by the Association of German Women Entrepreneurs.

In between, there were always questions from the participants, which they easily asked using the online tool TEDME. They got the chance to network at the end during the digital get-together, where they could also exchange ideas in small groups and discuss the topics further.

Behind the event was the joint project Gründergeist #Youngstarts Münsterland, which strengthens the start-up intensity in the Münsterland region and opens up new start-up potential and target groups with target group-specific offers. The project is funded by the European Union and the NRW Ministry of Economics as part of the ERDF call "Regio.NRW".
Der Münsterland e.V. is implementing it as lead partner together with the following partners: Wirtschaftsförderung Kreis Coesfeld GmbH (wfc), Wirtschaftsförderung im Kreis Warendorf (gfw), Technologieförderung Münster GmbH, TAFH Münster GmbH, Wirtschaftsförderungs- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft Steinfurt mbH (WESt) and Wirtschaftsförderungsgesellschaft für den Kreis Borken mbH (WFG). Other supporters are the North Westphalia Chamber of Industry and Commerce and the Münster Chamber of Crafts.

More information is available at www.youngstarts-muensterland.com.