InnoPRO: Exchange – Effectively scaling research and innovation

Thuringia, Germany and Europe, with their technology-oriented approach, have an excellent research landscape, technological competence and strong talent. However, in a world where value creation and innovative strength are increasingly distributed more evenly across the globe, countries like China themselves become strong players and the USA strategically combines capital with cross-platform technology, technological strength and excellent ideas alone are no longer sufficient. The key is to make ideas visible more quickly and to bring them into implementation at an early stage, to build new cross-sector partnerships and to rapidly develop alternative paths for financing and value creation. A central lever here is to build complete value chains regionally and keep them in the country in order to reduce production costs. It is precisely here that numerous fields for research and innovation open up.

Especially in Thuringia, we have plenty of clever ideas and possess research strength. But increasingly, time, knowledge, and suitable access are lacking to increase their visibility beyond the region, to establish tailored Contacte, and to tap into new sources of funding.

In this InnoPRO event, we will take a practical look together - and deliberately interactively - at two promising methods from the field of Open Innovation. On the one hand, to actively drive developments (Push), and on the other hand, to develop innovations specifically from needs and markets (Pull).

1. Crowdsourcing for the targeted use of swarm intelligence in innovation and financing processes, e.g., for market feedback, visibility, and new cross-sector solutions
2. Matching platforms that translate research results into applications and collaborations.
3. Together with experts and participants, we will develop joint approaches on August 18 on how forward-looking research and innovation projects in Thuringia can become more visible, find the right implementation partners, and access financial resources more quickly. Concrete implementation projects will also be discussed in this InnoPRO format.

The aim of the event is to better understand the potentials and limitations of both approaches and to apply them together in implementation projects. How can crowdsourcing and matching platforms be effectively combined and used meaningfully in Thuringia to make access to available knowledge and networking of potential regional partners as effective as possible?