2024 promises to be a year full of innovations and new opportunities. As the leading Open Innovation incubator, we have worked tirelessly to optimize our programs and tailor them even better to the needs of our partners.
NEW TIMELINE: INTRODUCING OUR INNOVATION BATCHES
This year, we've made an exciting change: We have decided to offer an even more flexible timeline for our innovation programs. Whether our sector-specific innovation programs (such as Future Finance, LegalTech or HealthTech) or our topic-focused programs (such as our AI Program or SDG Innovation Program) will from now on each start at three different times of the year - the three ekipa batches.
The batches offer more time flexibility than ever before, allowing challenge providers to choose the timeframe that best suits their needs and schedules while simultaneously benefiting from the diversity and potential of our Open Innovation experience and our ecosystem.
Three Batches – Several New Open Innovation Challenges
The three batches will provide the general framework for our innovation programs in 2024. As before, we have a broad portfolio of focus topics to meet the needs of each of our partners.
The batches of 2024 will start in April, July and November and last 6 months each - our usual and proven duration of an Open Innovation programm.
The first batch will again include exciting partners and challenges. You will find some of the upcoming partners for the first batch listed below:
- Württembergische Versicherung
- BMW/rad°hub – Spotlight 2050: Revealing the Unseen
- RWE
- IK Innovationskasse
- Hallesche
- Rheinmetall
- Bayern LB
- Stellantis
- IKK classic
- Westenergie
- Samsung – Solve for Tomorrow
- Deloitte Quantum Climate Challenge
We are looking forward to the next six months with these partners and to the upcoming solutions!
EXPANSION OF OUR ECOSYSTEM
In our ongoing effort to expand our ecosystem of innovators and create even more opportunities for collaborative innovation, we're particularly excited to announce two exciting developments:
New Collaboration with Fraunhofer AHEAD
We are pleased that we have officially entered into a cooperation with the Fraunhofer Ahead programme. This gives us the opportunity to place our partners' challenges throughout the entire Fraunhofer network and thus all 76 institutes. This will enable us to recruit even more innovative researchers and start-ups for our partners' challenges and effectively combine research and practice!
Our corporate partners who take part in one of our programmes are also introduced to other teams who are going through the Ahead programme for up to a year after the programme ends. In addition to our joint project, we therefore match our current and former programme partners with current start-ups / spin-offs / research teams that emerge from the Fraunhofer AHEAD programme.
Introducing Our New Department "Innovation Development"
In order to reach the high-potential innovators in our upcoming projects and generate a real fit for our partners, we are constantly working on expanding our ecosystem of innovators.
We not only want to reach the 160 international universities and research institutes, over 2000 start-ups and 22,000 innovators already registered on our platform, we also want to increase them. To achieve this, we have set up a our new „Innovation Development Department“ in addition to our existing activities, increased the number of staff involved in our ecosystem-related activities and strategically reorganised them. With more man-power we will focus even more on long-lasting relationships, high-quality innovators and partnerships in the academic and research world. This will further ensure the success of Open Innovation projects with our partners.
Stay tuned for further updates, and feel free to contact us if you'd like to learn more about our programs in 2024!
