Günter Faltin


Günter Faltin is a German economist and entrepreneur.

Life

Faltin graduated with a Dr. rer.soc. from the University of Konstanz in 1972. In 1977 he became Professor of Economics at the Free University of Berlin, where he established the entrepreneurship department. Since 2013 he has been teaching as visiting professor at Chiang Mai University.
He was appointed for several years visiting professor to Asia by the German Academic Exchange Service. He gave lectures and workshops on entrepreneurship in many countries, among them the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Russia, South Korea, and Japan. From 1984 - 1988 he was deputy president of the German Society for Education, Invention and Innovation,, Berlin Section. In 1999 he founded the at Free University of Berlin, which was adopted by Volkswagen's “" in 2000. From 2000 - 2003 he served as an expert for the project "Entrepreneurship in Education and Training in Russia and Ukraine", he conducted a series of workshops for the European Union's European Training Foundation in St. Petersburg and Kiev from 2000 to 2003. In 2010 he followed an invitation of the government of Bhutan for a keynote to the conference on “High Tech and Entrepreneurship".

Business career

In 1985, he founded the "", based on the "Teekampagne", The "Teekampagne" is the world's largest importer of Darjeeling leaf tea, according to the Tea Board of India. In 1992 Faltin launched and sponsored the reforestation project S.E.R.V.E. ; the WWF is taking charge of the project on location in Darjeeling, India. Faltin is business angel and coach of startup companies such as “", "" , and "",
In 2001 he established the „:de:Stiftung Entrepreneurship|Stiftung Entrepreneurship“, a foundation aimed at furthering entrepreneurship and hosting the yearly "Entrepreneurship Summit".

Teachings

Central to Faltins teachings is that entrepreneurship today is available to everybody, not just for those with capital and patents. He dissociates clearly entrepreneurship from business administration. In a postindustrial society a well thought out entrepreneurial design is more decisive for the success of a start-up company than having much capital. By using ready-made components a founder could even challenge big companies.

Honors

In his best-selling book „Brain versus Capital“, he proposes a radically new approach to generating entrepreneurial ventures with an emphasis on ecologically and culturally sensitive issues.