60 years anniversary
An innovative university with innovative students for 60 years
The University of Southern Denmark turns 60 this year. To mark the occasion, throughout 2026, we will focus on some of the keywords that can be traced back to 1966 and which still characterise the University today. This article is about entrepreneurship, which has always played an important role for all the University’s campuses and will continue to do so in the future.
Creating value for and with society has been a core task for SDU throughout the 60 years in which the University has existed. Close collaboration with the business community is a key priority for the University, and it is brought to life by innovative students who start their own businesses.
The University of Southern Denmark is well equipped to fulfil its entrepreneurial ambitions through the SDU Startup Station. Since 2015, the initiative has supported students in starting their own businesses. But in fact, the entrepreneurial spirit of SDU students dates all the way back to 1966 – the University’s first year of existence.
Christmas trees funded the Student Council
The newly established Student Council at the University needed funds to continue its work. In December, an ambitious goal was therefore set: to sell 1,000 Christmas trees and thereby ensure the Council’s financial survival.
For a long time, things were looking bleak, and well into the month, it seemed that only half of the procured trees would be sold. On December 21, the article ‘Not really a good Christmas story’ (Ingen rigtig god julehistorie) in Fyens Stiftstidende stated: ‘This is what can happen to novices in the mercantile world’.
However, the students changed their business strategy and in an innovative final sprint they reached their ambitious goal – much to the delight of the association’s accountant Peter Duus Larsen, stud.med., among others.
Several hundred entrepreneurs as of today
Fast forward to today, and the picture is clear: the students are highly interested in developing and starting their own businesses while they are studying at SDU. Today, the projects are significantly more high-tech than the Christmas tree venture in 1966, several of them are award-winning, and the development speaks for itself. The number of startups that have received support and guidance from SDU has grown from 212 in 2021 to 309 in 2024.
This has been achieved through the SDU Startup Station, which is anchored in the University’s unit SDU RIO, which works to bring research, education and the outside world even closer together.
Several of the entrepreneurial projects revolve around climate-related solutions, and a number of startups originate from SDU’s talent programme in green entrepreneurship, Below Zero. More than a third of the entrepreneurs are women, which is more than the national average, according to figures from the Danish Chamber of Commerce.
The University of Southern Denmark continues to reach out to the outside world – at the levels of both research and education. We create value for and with society. And although contemporary entrepreneurial stories are rarely about Christmas as was the case with the Christmas tree sale in 1966, today’s innovative solutions have the same basic purpose as Christmas: it’s about giving – back to society.
The University of Southern Denmark since 1966
To mark the anniversary year, a series of articles with a historical perspective will be published on an ongoing basis, highlighting the defining characteristics of the university that, over the past 60 years, has grown from its beginnings in a field in Odense to now covering the entire Region of Southern Denmark.
Creating value for and with society on multiple parameters
As an institution and among its researchers, the University of Southern Denmark is also performing excellently – and increasingly well – in entrepreneurship and innovation.
The international ranking Times Higher Education ranks SDU number 280 globally. It is particularly noteworthy that SDU is ranked 107th in the world on the indicator for research collaboration with industry and business. This result supports SDU's strategic ambition to create knowledge that makes a difference to society and business.
In addition, over the past two years, SDU researchers have founded 13 research-based companies, which is a record. The founders represent researchers from all faculties across a broad range of spinouts working on everything from drones to solutions for heart patients.