Most people know that MIT has their $100K Entrepreneurship Competition. Did you know that Humboldt University has a 100K € competition of their own?

That was one of a number of surprises when getting together today with Volker Hofmann. He’s the team leader of SPIN-OFF, which supports entrepreneurs and scientists at the university looking to successfully turn their visions into businesses. It’s part of Humboldt-Innovation GmbH, which is the knowledge and technology transfer company of the university.

They have incubation space right in Mitte (center of Berlin) as well as other locations in the city for teams to focus on their startup. I met with several of them. It was good to see that they were a mix of “hard technology” (which is usually the case with technology offices) and consumer facing (often times, bright students with big ideas). SPIN-OFF is also starting to build a track record as well, with several “grads” of the initiative now employing at least 15 people and having gone on to raise additional funding.

Without a lot of data points, I came over to Berlin with the perception that U.S. colleges were well ahead in commercialization efforts being driven by-and-through university focused initiatives. I’m leaving thinking that the gap isn’t quite as wide as I first imagined.