Professor Dr. Klaus Fichter is founder and director of the Borderstep Institute for Innovation and Sustainability. As a professor, he teaches at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, where he holds the adjunct professorship for Innovation Management and Sustainability (PIN).

In the Department of Economics and Law, he is responsible for the study focus “Sustainable Innovation, Digitalization, and Entrepreneurship” and at the Center for Lifelong Learning (C3L) for the extra-occupational Master’s program in Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship.

The innovative “Sustainable Venturing” study module, which Klaus Fichter played a key role in developing, received the Hans Sauer Award in the competition for “Promoting Environmental Innovation.” In 2025, the module also received the Hochschulperle award from the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft.

The EU Erasmus project ScaleUp4Sustainability, which he led, was the German winner and European finalist of the European Enterprise Promotion Award in 2022.

Klaus Fichter is a founding member of TRUST@UOL – Center for Transformations and Sustainable Futures, the University of Oldenburg’s research center for sustainability studies. Furthermore, he is a mentor for start-up entrepreneurs at the Start-up and Innovation Center of the University of Oldenburg. He is also responsible for the topics of cooperation, transfer and innovation in the Directorate Center for Lifelong Learning (C3L), a scientific center of the University of Oldenburg.

Professor Fichter is a member of the Governing Board of the FGF Förderkreis Gründungsforschung e.V., the largest network of entrepreneurship and innovation researchers in the German-speaking region. He also founded the FGF working group “Sustainable Entrepreneurship” in 2015 and chaired it until 2022. He also serves as co-chair of the “Innovation for Sustainability” track at the European Academy of Management (EURAM) conference.

His research focuses on concepts, tools and support systems for sustainable entrepreneurship, processes and diffusion paths of sustainability innovations, green start-ups as well as methods and metrics of impact measurement.

Klaus Fichter studied business management and economics at the University of Bremen. From 1993 to 2000, he headed the research group “Corporate Sustainability” at the Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW) in Berlin. He received his doctorate in 1998 and his habilitation in 2005.

In his private life, the passionate Tango dancer likes to combine innovation with aesthetics. For his zero-emission house built in 2005, he combined new solar and geothermal technologies with renewable building materials for climate-neutral comfort.