Markets for intenational technology transfer – MarketsFITT

Background

With its High-Tech Strategy 2025, the German government is pursuing the core objective of making knowledge and technologies work. Knowledge and technology transfer thus plays a key role in promoting innovation. More and more effective innovations will help secure prosperity, growth and quality of life in Germany and Europe in the long term and strengthen its international position. This poses particular challenges for the international knowledge and technology transfer of independent research institutes.

Increasing competition, but also the solution of global challenges, implies the strategic importance of international cooperation. The motives for international research and innovation activities range from the search for actors and regions that act as knowledge and technology providers (knowledge sourcing) to those that act mainly as knowledge and technology takers and exploiters (knowledge exploiting). The assessment of foreign research and technology markets and the identification of actors for transfer-oriented collaborations are subject to a number of regional, organizational and political influencing factors.

Project goal

Strategy development in this multi-level system is complex and requires not only a good information base, but also a structured and systematic evaluation and assessment logic. The aim of the project is to develop a strategy tool that supports strategy units in independent research institutes in identifying and evaluating foreign knowledge and technology markets. In addition to a descriptive-analytical understanding of the respective target regions, it is to capture in particular the existing innovation ecosystems, the contextual factors and actors and thus actively support the process of development and cooperation building.

The MarketsFITT project aims to develop an approach for independent research institutes to identify international markets for strategic research and transfer projects and to support a sound strategy development for opening up international markets with a data-based analysis tool. The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, as a leading and already internationally positioned organization of applied research, regards itself as having a particular role in efficiently organizing the transfer and successfully establishing knowledge and technologies - often together with German and European companies - in global value creation networks.

Methodology

The instrument to be developed here is intended to address three core needs:

• (1) Facilitate the identification of international markets for strategic research and transfer projects and provide the relevant information in a way that is as automated and demand-oriented as possible at the sectoral, regional and actor levels.
• (2) Improve the systematic analysis and evaluation of international markets for strategic research and transfer projects and justify the selection of key actors for collaborations against the background of strategic objectives.
• (3) Support the development of strategies and the internal allocation of resources for the development of international markets for strategic research and transfer projects and accompany the market entry with accompanying measures.

Using the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft as an example, the tool will demonstrate the application possibilities for data-supported identification, analysis and evaluation of international markets for strategic research and transfer projects. In this way, it will contribute to the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft's internationalization strategy, in particular the strategic development of international knowledge and technology markets.

Client

Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF)

Project partner

Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

Project duration

April 2021 – March 2023