Collaboration as the Key to the Succesful Transfer of Innovation
At a glance
- The complex logistics of the automotive industry makes evident that individual companies cannot afford to transition to Industrie 4.0 on their own.
- The industry therefore needs to collaborate in the field of research and development (R&D).
- R&D projects – especially publicly funded ones – will need to be revised.
- The criteria that define successful research transfer are an integrated approach, speed, adaptability, market orientation and economic viability.
- New forms of collaboration are required, with close collaboration between all the partners from the initial establishment of the consortium right up to the transfer of the results.
- Agile, autonomous project management is increasingly a feature of successful research.
- Research projects must address how their results will be transferred and the associated legal questions right from the outset.
- A publicly funded network of connected regional transfer centres would support the transfer of research results.
acatech INNOKEY 4.0 Study
The acatech POSITION PAPER is based on the project “Kollaboration als Schlüssel zum erfolgreichen Transfer von Innovationen am Beispiel der Automobillogistik” (Collaboration as the Key to the Successful Transfer of Innovation: The Example of Automotive Logistics – INNOKEY 4.0), funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi). In this project, acatech and the Fraunhofer-Institute for Material Flow and Logistics (IML) investigated joint R&D initiatives using the example of the automotive logistics industry. Drivers and constraints for the successful transfer of R&D project results into industrial applications and measures for addressing some of the current problems were identified through structured interviews with experts from academia and industry carried out in June and July 2016. The results were validated in March 2017 through an online survey of representatives of SMEs, large-scale enterprises, universities, other higher education
institutions and research institutions.