Urban Kaiser, head of the Innovation Acceptance Unit at Fraunhofer IMW, was involved as a jury member in selecting the winners from a total of 25 final teams from the Asia-Pacific region, ranging from Afghanistan and India to China, Thailand and New Zealand. The teams presented their ideas on innovation in the cultural sector during the virtual pitch event on January 9, 2021. With his expertise in the field of innovation acceptance and through his many years of research activities on the application field of cultural heritage at the Fraunhofer IMW, Urban Kaiser made a significant contribution in the assessment of the ideas presented.
The cooperation of the UNESCO Regional Office for Asia-Pacific and the Fraunhofer IMW was initiated in 2020. Fraunhofer IMW can look back on more than ten years of research on socio-economic issues in the field of cultural heritage in Germany and Europe, with research activities in this field increasingly focusing on the Asia-Pacific region over the past 3 years.

"From the perspective of a jury member, I found it inspiring to be able to learn about the diverse ideas and innovations. Learning about innovation and transformation in an online format and seeing how these could be discussed, promoted and subsequently realized is enriching for me as a scientist with a focus on innovation adoption," said Urban Kaiser, describing his role on the jury.

The Innovation Acceptance Unit together with the UNESCO regional office already organized a digital workshop series on the topic of sustainable value creation and cultural heritage management in 2020. This took place as part of the collaborative project "URGENT 2.0 - Livable Historic Neighborhoods in Chiang Mai."

The "TechCul Ideathon" organized by UNESCO Asia-Pacific now offered another space for targeted cooperation with the jury participation of Mr. Kaiser. The tenor of the event was linked to the research focus of the Innovation Acceptance Group in the application field of cultural heritage.

The results of the "TechCul Ideathon" will now be followed by another online event in the Asian region, which will be offered to the members of the Hong Kong Institute of Architectural Conservationists and the interested public on March 11, 2021.

A winning team of the Ideathon from Hong Kong is invited to present their concept for a new online platform to interactively showcase rural lifestyles. Urban Kaiser will share his impressions as a jury member of the Ideathon with the interested audience during a panel discussion at this event.