About us
Since 2001, BioRegio STERN Management GmbH has been active as an economic developer for the life sciences. It promotes innovations and start-ups on behalf of the public sector, thus helping to strengthen the region and the industry as a whole. It is a central point of contact for founders and entrepreneurs, including those from cooperating high-tech sectors such as automation and IT.
Our mission
As industry insiders, we help seize opportunities and turn ideas into reality. In this context, we are a central point of contact to network players, provide access to funding and ensure visibility in the industry.
One cluster, many competencies, a wide variety of cross-cutting issues
The STERN BioRegion covers the regions of Stuttgart and Neckar-Alb and the cities of Tübingen and Reutlingen – known worldwide for their automotive manufacturers – and is also home to over 120 small and medium-sized medtech companies. One of the cluster’s key features is its combination of established family businesses, hidden champions and over 110 fledgling biotech companies. Another outstanding and forward-looking feature is the spatial proximity of companies from the engineering-driven SME sector and companies from the life sciences industry. Consequently, the strategy of BioRegio STERN Management GmbH is to bring its life sciences cluster into contact with the local automation technology and mechanical and plant engineering sectors in order to create an exceptional mix of high-tech expertise across start-ups and global corporations.
Science and business, a successful symbiosis
The region’s economic prosperity is ideally complemented by scientific excellence of numerous renowned research institutes and three universities. The companies in the STERN BioRegion benefit from the large number of scientific institutions conducting research in the field of life sciences. These include, to name but a few, the University of Tübingen, the Tübingen University Hospital, the NMI Natural and Medical Sciences Institute at the University of Tübingen based in Reutlingen, the Universities of Stuttgart and Hohenheim, eight other universities with a focus on the life sciences, the Fraunhofer Institutes for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (IPA) and for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology (IGB), and the German Institutes of Textile and Fiber Research (DITF) Denkendorf. In addition, there are the Max Planck Institutes for Intelligent Systems, for Developmental Biology and for Biological Cybernetics, as well as the Friedrich Miescher Laboratory of the Max Planck Society.
Networker and innovation promoter for the life sciences in the region
BioRegio STERN Management GmbH is shaping the future by promoting innovation in the life sciences in order to develop the economy in this area. Accordingly, it supports efforts to commercialize application-oriented research in order to bring innovative products and new therapies into the everyday lives of the population. Of course, this is also with a view to the economic potential that ultimately leads to the creation of new jobs. For this reason, BioRegio STERN Management GmbH promotes start-ups and cooperations, offers support in obtaining funding and organizes, for example, special coaching on the subject of product approval and specialist events. It also submits applications for funding projects and coordinates the same.
Award-winning
BioRegio STERN Management GmbH has already received many awards, such as the Silver Label from the European Secretariat for Cluster Analysis (ESCA) for its successful cluster management. The joint location initiative of politics and industry "Germany - Land of Ideas" selected the company network "ELSA - Automation Solutions for the Life Sciences" among the 100 best projects in 2016. The STERN BioRegion is thus officially an "Outstanding Landmark in the Land of Ideas".
BioRegion STERN: Zahlen. Fakten.
Die BioRegion STERN gehört seit Jahren zu den großen und erfolgreichen BioRegionen in Deutschland. Börsengänge, Neugründungen und Investitionen von und für Unternehmen aus der Region belegen den anhaltenden Erfolgskurs der Wirtschaftsförderung

Die BioRegio STERN Management GmbH bietet interkommunale Wirtschaftsförderung für eine Region mit 248 Städten und Gemeinden und insgesamt 3,3 Millionen Einwohnern. Mit über 150 Milliarden Euro Bruttoinlandsprodukt ist die Wirtschaftskraft dieser Region vergleichbar mit der von Ungarn.
120 Medtech-Unternehmen mit über 12.000 Mitarbeitern sowie 110 Biotech-Unternehmen mit über 4.500 Mitarbeitern bilden den Kern des Clusters. Von wachsender Bedeutung sind die mehr als 1.000 Engineering-Unternehmen von denen etwa 40 bereits in den Life-Sciences tätig sind. Insgesamt sind in der Region etwa 19.000 Arbeitsplätze im Life-Sciences-Bereich angesiedelt.

Zur BioRegion STERN gehören knapp 400 „Mitglieder“; der überwiegende Teil gehört zu den KMU (55 Prozent). Außerdem sind Großunternehmen (3 Prozent), Hochschulen und Forschungseinrichtungen (18 Prozent) sowie sonstige Organisationen (24 Prozent) dabei. Die BioRegio STERN Management GmbH wird zu 20 Prozent durch öffentliche Förderung finanziert; die Gesellschafterzuschüsse betragen 75 Prozent, fünf Prozent sind Umsatzerlöse.
3 Milliarden Euro Investitionen und 550 Millionen Euro Fördermittel allein des Bundes sind in die 110 Biotech-Unternehmen der Region bisher geflossen. Seit ihrer Gründung begleitete das Team der BioRegio STERN Management GmbH die Gründung von 75 Unternehmen, die über 3.000 Arbeitsplätze schufen.