First Corvinus DSG study trip to Austria – four universities in four days

On 14-18 May 2024, 22 Corvinus students and three lecturers participated in the first Corvinus DSG study visit to Austria, organised on the theme of “Starting a Business”. Thanks to the generous support of the Austrian-Hungarian Action Foundation, we visited four Austrian universities during the four-day trip. The study visit was an unforgettable experience for all participants. 

The first day of the study visit started with a quick ride on the Czech RegioJet train from Budapest to Vienna. There, our students and lecturers spent the morning at the Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien (WU), with several professional programmes. Among others, they visited the university’s Entrepreneurship Center. In the afternoon, the group visited the Hungarian Embassy in Vienna and the Faculty of Economics at the University of Vienna. The evening ended in a beer garden. 

On the second day, half of the group visited the Belvedere Palace, then travelled back to Budapest in the early afternoon. Meanwhile, the other half of the group travelled to Linz. From that point, the DSG team continued their study visit together with the Hungarian participants of the Danube Cup. They visited the Open Innovation Center of Johannes Kepler University (JKU) Linz, where the Danube Cup university start-up competition was launched. Here, the managing director of one of the spin-off companies of the JKU university (www.scch.at) gave a very exciting presentation on the potential applications of artificial intelligence. The next programme was a presentation by Majourny, a startup based in Linz, which aims to revolutionise the plannning of travel in the future, by creating a travel experience that meets the priorities of GenZ. Afterwards, participants had the opportunity to test the Majourny service in Linz with a treasure hunt. The evening ended at the Tabakfabrik with Austrian food and local beer. 

The third day started with a train ride from Linz to Steyr, where we visited the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria at the invitation of Prof. Mátyás Gritsch. Steyr is a picturesque historic town at the beautiful estuary of the Enns and Steyr rivers. The University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria offers top-class business programmes on its campus in Steyr, which is ranked among the best in Austria by the CHE University Ranking 2023. After a tour of the city and the campus, the team had the opportunity to participate in a design thinking course with Prof. Dr. Daniela Freudenthaler-Mayrhofer and Prof. Dr. Patrick Brandtner. In the afternoon, we travelled back to Linz, where half of the group visited the Ars Electronica museum and the other half attended a project meeting at the Grand Garage Innovation Hub. 

The fourth day was the day of the international final of the Danube Cup 2024 competition. After the heavy rain in the morning stopped, we took a campus tour. Afterwards, the students joined an innovative recycling workshop at the LIT Factory of the JKU LIT Open Innovation Center, titled ‘Better recycling: from plastic waste to frisbee’. The lecturers took part in another international project meeting. 

The DC’24 final started with an opening speech by Prof. Stefan Koch, Rector of Johannes Kepler University Linz. The international jury had a Hungarian member, too – Norbert Leskó, founder of MiniCRM Zrt. First the CESAR Fashion startup of Corvinus University of Budapest presented their business idea. The girls (like all the finalists) were extremely well prepared and not only presented their business ideas, but demonstrated the feasibility of their ideas with three prototypes. In total 8 teams from 4 countries pitched. While the jury was deliberating, Eva-Maria Infanger from MatheArena presented the story of their startup. The first prize was finally won by the Serbian team ‘Artemi’. (More details about the competition can be found here: Hundreds of startups and spinoffs, millions of euros of university revenues from innovation, high-level professionalism in entrepreneurship education) 

We had four days extremely rich in experience, with lots of new perspectives on business start-ups and in an international context. We are grateful to the Austrian-Hungarian Action Foundation for co-financing the study visit!