About SIBE
Developing people.
Bringing ideas to life.
For more than three decades, the School of International Business and Entrepreneurship (SIBE) has been combining academic education with entrepreneurial challenges. At the center are people who take on responsibility, recognize opportunities, and turn ideas into value-creating reality.
This is our understanding of education, development, and entrepreneurship.
What drives us.
Develop people. Enable innovation.
Our mission rests on two convictions: people can become creative personalities.
We create frameworks in which people learn to recognize opportunities, approach them courageously, think them through carefully, assess them responsibly, and turn them into value-creating reality. Ideas can become value-creating innovations.
For us, innovation means more than just creating something new. The decisive factor is that the new creates sustainable value for companies, organizations, and society.
These two claims shape the teaching, research, and corporate culture of SIBE.
We believe that people can become creative personalities.
We create frameworks in which people learn to recognize opportunities, approach them with courage, think them through carefully, and assess them responsibly.
and to become a value-adding reality.
We believe that ideas can become value-creating innovations.
For us, innovation means more than just creating something new. The decisive factor is that the new creates sustainable value for companies, organizations, and society.
Our Philosophy
Development arises from theory, action, and reflection.
The Steinbeis transfer concept forms the basis of our educational philosophy. At SIBE, it finds its special expression in Experience Based Curriculum (EBC). A Master's degree at SIBE combines three elements that are equally important to us:
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Theory + Action + Reflection = Competence Development
Learning by doing.
At SIBE, the curriculum and the corporate project are closely intertwined. This ensures that knowledge is not only absorbed, but also applied, tested, and further developed.
Knowledge turns into action. Action turns into experience. Competence arises from reflected experience.
Read our philosophy in detail
The »transfer concept« of the Steinbeis Foundation forms the basis of the entire educational offering at Steinbeis University. This transfer essentially takes place by organizing all certificate courses, Bachelor's and Master's degree programs, as well as doctoral studies, according to the so-called „project competence principle.“ Due to the qualitative and quantitative significance of degree programs as the core competency of Steinbeis University, this principle is implemented using the example of the „Experience Based Curriculum“ (EBC).
– A Master's degree program at SIBE always follows the principle of the Experience Based Curriculum (EBC).
– The EBC is the specific design of the project competence study program at the Steinbeis University by the SIBE.
– The EBC at SIBE is characterized by an interplay of the three elements of theory, action, and reflection. These three elements play an equally important role in the educational process and in SIBE's curricula.
– As part of the EBC at SIBE, students are required to translate the theory learned and deepened through (self-)study into action within (corporate) reality and make it tangible through experience (transfer). In (written) project studies and (oral) presentations, students reflect throughout the entire duration of their master's degree on the real-world projects they implement in the company. Parallel to this, students also reflect on their own individual competence development—and thus their personal development.
The EBC of the SIBE thus offers excellent conditions for personal development, which is a necessary condition of tertiary education.
While in traditional higher education two protagonists—the higher education institution and the student—interact with one another, EBC takes place through the interaction of three protagonists: the higher education institution, the student, and the company.
Herein lies the project's role as an integral transfer instrument between theory and practice: Throughout the SIBE Master's degree program, the project ensures that the initially general and scientifically sound knowledge is transferred into actions within a very specific corporate environment. It is precisely this active momentum of transfer and the accompanying or subsequent reflection through which competencies are ultimately developed.
The SIBE curriculum and the phases of the project within the company are closely coordinated. This enables a direct transfer of knowledge and thus learning by doing. The scientific theories and methods learned in the seminar are translated by the students into corporate practice as part of their project work: as corporate reality and as consolidated theoretical knowledge.
The focus of the projects is as diverse as the challenges faced by the companies: innovative growth strategies, cost optimization, restructuring, new management systems, the development of new target groups, the creation of new products, etc. The study or corporate projects thus form potential specialization areas within the degree programs, thereby ensuring that the individual interests and goals of the students are consistently pursued and promoted throughout the entire duration of their studies.
Our history
More than three decades of development.
The history of SIBE is not a sequence of study programs. It is shaped by an idea: to connect education, transfer, and entrepreneurship. Over more than three decades, this idea has given rise to an internationally oriented business school with thousands of alumni and hundreds of partner companies. Today's SIBE traces its origins back to the Steinbeis Academy for Business Promotion, founded by Werner G. Faix in 1993; in 1998, the School of International Business and Entrepreneurship was established under the umbrella of the then Steinbeis University Berlin.