Prof. Dr. Christian Müller-Roterberg

"Practised Interdisciplinarity"

Prof. Dr Christian Müller-Roterberg feels very much at home within HRW’s core areas—STEM subjects and Business Administration. With his background in technical and natural sciences studies and a doctorate in Business Administration, interdisciplinarity is not just lip service for him. He sees the greatest source of ideas for innovation precisely at the interface between technology and business.

In April 2012, Dr Müller-Roterberg took up the endowed professorship sponsored by Sparkasse Mülheim at HRW’s Institute of Economics. In his teaching, he particularly focuses on entrepreneurship and innovation management. Alongside his teaching and research activities, Prof. Dr Müller-Roterberg serves as Programme Director for the Master’s in Business Administration. He advises companies and conducts workshops using methods such as Design Thinking, the Lean Startup approach, and the Business Model Canvas. He has published several books and over 30 German- and English-language publications in the fields of innovation management and entrepreneurship.

In his professional career, he has been actively involved in several start-up projects and conducted due diligence for the IPO of a start-up company. Additionally, he worked at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, where he was responsible for funding research projects—particularly with regard to start-ups and collaborations between industry and academia. Prior to that, he was Technology Transfer Officer at the Charité University Hospital in Berlin, where he supported company founders and advised on patent issues. He furthered his knowledge in intellectual property rights through distance learning.

Prof. Müller completed his doctorate in Business Administration at TU Hamburg’s Institute for Technology and Innovation Management. During his doctoral studies, he spent several months in Japan at Toyohashi University of Technology conducting a study on entrepreneurship activities in Japan.

In addition to his business studies, Mr Müller-Roterberg earned a diploma in Biotechnology from TU Braunschweig. For his diploma thesis in biotechnological production, he spent a year as a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the USA.