Our Main Research Areas

We are working on the elimination of limitations in the sense of the 2030 Agenda.

Just as economy, ecology and social issues are mutually dependent on each other in the magic triangle of sustainability and cannot individually be optimized. So too do technologies, innovations and entrepreneurship relate on each other: Great inventions that promote a sustainable future always require an entrepreneurial transformation in order to penetrate a broad market. This is the only way inventions become innovations. This is the only way to turn knowledge into action.

Our guidelines and research topics

Innovation

Key technologies

ITE – our identity

Digitalisation and biologisation

Invention + Entrepreneurial Transformation = Innovation

Light bulb, bag of coins and rocket in a graphic

While it is common knowledge that we consider novel solutions to a particular problem to be innovative, it is often overlooked that the term innovation describes the entire process from the creation of an idea to its widespread application in society. The ITE is dedicated to transferring the results of excellent research and development into widespread application, which requires entrepreneurial motivation and implementation.

Innovation driver key technologies

The transformation to a climate-compatible society corresponds to a paradigm shift from a fossil to a post-fossil society.The scarcity of nature (considering both sink and resource capacities), the social insight into the urgency and necessity of the transformation, and the provision and development of new key technologies (digitalisation, biologisation/biotech/bioeconomy, efficiency-enhancing new developments in the energy sector, etc.) will trigger a historically exemplary megatrend, which some authors are already calling a new "green Kondratieff wave sustainably influenced by biotechnology".

If we look at the history of the present Kondratieff cycles, all emerging growth waves have in common the respective preceding crisis: Crises are obviously indispensable elements of our economic historical development (looking at a period of 200 years): Whether it is the panic of 1837, the founders' crisis of the late 19th century, the great depression of the 1930s or also the two oil price crises of the 1970s of the 20th century: The history of our prosperity could be described as the history of our crises. The prerequisite for every new upswing is new basic innovations, which are carried into the mainstream by a growing demand for these key technologies. Demand, in turn, is driven by the productivity bottleneck factor. Only when this bottleneck factor has been overcome can new productivity gains be unleashed.

[Text credit: Stefanie Heiden, SUSTAINABILITY, TRANSFORMATION & INNOVATION - A CHALLENGING TRIAD, BRAIN AG Blickwinkel Q4 2014]

I

Open innovation, limitations, accelerators, sustainability, convergences, stakeholder management, markets and innovators

T

Technology trends and challenges in terms of the 2030 agenda, biologisation, biotechnology/life sciences disciplines, bioeconomy, bioinspired process architectures, researcher personalities

E

Entrepreneurial transformation, financing (startup and growth), sustainable capital investments (sustainable finance), green deal, entrepreneur personalities (female entrepreneurship)

Our focus: digitalisation and biologisation

We are investigating potentials arising from the linking of digitalisation and biologisation in the following research and development projects, for example: