Digitalisation and further media development are core processes of the current digital age. In order for companies to benefit from technical progress, their employees must have or are expected to acquire the relevant skills. Companies therefore are faced with the task of not being overwhelmed with the mass of innovations and opportunities and, in the best-case scenario, of being able to use them to improve their own performance.
Small and medium-sized enterprises represent 99% of all enterprises in Germany. Though, it has not been further established, how the majority of small enterprises and their employees participate in this development. The research question therefore consists of two parts. On the one hand: "Is the promotion of employees' skills taken care of in micro-enterprises?" and on the other hand: "Where are the opportunities and challenges for companies of this size?”
In order to answer the research question, a qualitative research method was used, the guideline-based interview. The interviewed companies were all in the media and IT sector. Thus, the recorded and transcribed data provided a real insight into the current situation in micro-enterprises.
The responses to the interviews showed that companies with very small numbers of employees are more dependent on their employees than others. So, the commitment of the employees is decisive for the success of the company itself. It is the management's task to promote this and ensure employee satisfaction.
Companies that pay more attention to employee development are therefore more recommendable for career starters who need and/or want to develop themselves and their entire horizon of experience.
Entrepreneurship plays a vital role in scientific literature and in public debates. Especially in these hightech and digitized times it happens more and more frequently that young entrepreneurs with a good idea make the breakthrough and set up an established company. Basically, there are an increasing number of start-ups and a trend towards independence. The economy of a country depends on young entrepreneurs in order to remain economically competitive in international competition. It follows that young entrepreneurs must be encouraged and supported. This support is expressed in various stages of foundation and through various fields of action. In the meantime, there are many offers for start-up support. These networks satisfy different fields of action along a foundation. However, a structured overview of these networks on which a young founder can orient himself and gain easily access to the offers of the networks, is missing until then.
This work attempts to present these offers clearly on a map and to categorize and present the commitment in the respective fields of action. In addition to this main objective, the following three key questions are investigated and answered in this work:
1. How can the Entrepreneurship Networks be assigned to the respective fields of action of Entrepreneurship Education?
2. What is the benefit of such a classification for potential entrepreneurs in detail?
3. Are these Entrepreneurship networks missing an important step? Might they improve their offer? Does the value chain cover every need a young entrepreneur might have?
For this purpose, the respective fields of action of the networks are first separated from each other along a founding and defined individually. Subsequently, a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches was used to filter and analyze the contents of the websites of the networks. The results of this investigation were transformed in a classification
The aim of this work is to produce a map that displays the existing networks in the world clearly. The map also contains information that is more detailed and the classifica-tion of the networks in the respective fields of action.