Niclas Ruffer was born in 1981 in Minden (Germany) and studied economics in Heidelberg, Berlin and Rome from 2001-2006. After gathering international work experience in Sydney and Melbourne in 2007, he joined the Center for SME Research and Entrepreneurship of Mannheim University in 2008. He conducted various research projects for stakeholders such as the European Union, the Federal Ministry for Education and Research and the Ministry of Economics of the state of Baden-Wurttemberg. As a guest researcher he joined Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo in 2012-2013 before finishing his doctoral thesi...