the region of Schwarzwald-Baar-Heuberg is home to a lively community of small and medium-sized enterprises. This hotbed of innovation in south-west Germany stems from the region’s entrepreneurs – its visionaries, its busy inventors, its go-getters.
Innovation thrives off such people. Indeed, innovation isn’t even possible without people. And something becomes an innovation when the market cries out “Yippee!” Yet three things are needed for an innovation. People striving to bring about new technology, people striving to create new markets, and people striving to savor new successes.
Bringing about new technology entails expanding the realms of feasibility and fostering development. Creating new markets entails increasing the base of users and selling solutions. Savoring new successes entails improving management practices and generating revenues.
Unfortunately, all three aspects depend on each other. So they only work together. They’re also dictated by constraints. If a market isn’t interested in a certain product, then there’s no point trying to improve its technology. You have to market it better first.
Juggling these three interconnected factors, working around constraints and achieving optimization is called holism. Technology transfer à la Steinbeis aims to achieve this holism.
In development, transfer means accelerating outcomes by applying expertise from outside. In marketing and sales, transfer means becoming more precise by focusing on demands. In management, transfer means safeguarding long-term success through the right processes and monitoring mechanisms. Once again, this latest edition of TRANSFER discusses a number of projects that exemplify these specific approaches to transfer. I hope it provides you with some interesting insights!
Prof. Dr. Werner Bornholdt
Prof. Dr. Werner Bornholdt is a Steinbeiser of the first generation. In his role as the director of the Villingen- Schwenningen-based Steinbeis Transfer Center for New Products, he enjoyed over 20 years of success in fostering and shaping knowledge and technology transfer the Steinbeis way. In retirement, too, he remains true to the Steinbeis organization.
To find out more about Steinbeis in the region of Schwarzwald-Baar-Heuberg, turn to: Interview with Petra Ohlhauser