Editorial

Dear readers,

Transfer is no mean task. It’s like a river, with containers piling high on one bank, brimming with the latest insights, potential solutions, laboratory samples and pilot products. On the other bank, trucks, wagons and cargo planes line up to transport valuable freight to the users in trade and industry, and politics and society as a whole. But the river runs deep and is fraught with danger. The banks are rocky, the shallows, current and eddies unpredictable.

To traverse the transfer river and navigate its waters successfully, you need certain skills. To deal with uncertainty and danger, the unknown and the unfamiliar, takes independence and creativity. You need the discipline it takes to combat challenging issues – mentally and if necessary, physically. This ability to organize yourself (self-discipline) could also be called competence. Prerequisite skills, in every individual, in any transfer project.

Conversely, however, the opposite is also true: transfer creates competence. Confronting uncertainty and the unknown is an excellent way to learn self-discipline. There can be no better way to pick up new skills.

This correlation is a central theme running through this issue of Transfer Magazine. On the one hand, it documents the theoretical and practical implications of skills and personal competence, the types of issues addressed at the first Stuttgart Competencies Day. On the other, it outlines how successful concepts and solutions can be transferred from one party to another, with examples such as 3D data capture using wireless signal transmission, quality control in spectral analysis, and an image processing system used for quality control in production.

This edition also documents why it makes sense to work on live projects during a degree. Rather than try to teach work skills through scientific or academic instruction (which has proven ineffective), people are given the chance to work on successful reallife projects, often bringing substantial commercial benefits to a company. Some examples: training offered to managers at Steinbeis University; targeted skills development as a value success factor in developing people’s potential; an approach taken by an employment services company to invest in its own staff by developing their competencies – each one a qualification certified by Steinbeis.

The thing about transfer is that it’s not just science and academia that cross the river into everyday business. Transfer adds to the pool of knowledge and competencies. It prepares competencies acquisition for the future. Transfer makes competencies upgradeable. Transfer is by no means onedimensional. It’s a multifaceted network. There’s more to transfer than meets the eye...

Prof. Dr. Werner G. Faix