InnoRadar: SME Innovation Radar for Berlin Companies
InnoRadar is a joint project of the Berlin School of Economics and Law (Prof. Frank Habermann) and the University of Applied Sciences Berlin (Prof. Holger Lütters).
Project duration: 01/04/2013 – 31/03/2015
Research associate:
Julia Gunnoltz (HWR Berlin)
Juliane Schmidt (HWR Berlin)
Stefanie Quade (HWR Berlin)
Daniel Westphal (HTW Berlin)
Participating project partners:
Regional supporter:
Current project website:
Project idea:
Cloud computing, gamification, 3D printing or Enterprise 2.0: the list is long, and the frequency of innovations and trends is high. The discussion about their practical business value is often marked by contradictions. Buzzwords and sales arguments create additional confusion. At the same time, many trends offer enormous potential for designing more efficient and effective business processes. But which innovations are the “valuable” ones, and which of them are relevant for a specific company in a very specific situation?
Large companies answer these questions by setting up innovation departments. Or they commission top management consultants to separate the wheat from the chaff. A medium-sized company usually does not have these options. For SMEs, it is almost impossible to keep up with a largely global discussion, to identify the opportunities and risks of the latest developments in good time, and to decide on their implementation within their own company.
The emergence of innovations and the need to engage with them therefore lead to a serious problem in the management practice of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). If an SME hesitates to engage with a new trend or even decides not to do so at all, it risks operating uneconomically. This can even go so far as to put the company at risk of losing competitive advantages in the market. If, on the other hand, a company decides to regularly engage with new methods or technologies, it currently has to make a considerable effort to reach a well-founded decision for or against possible implementation measures.
Project objective:
The InnoRadar project therefore aims to develop an information and service offering tailored to the needs of medium-sized companies in the Berlin economy.
The companies
- are informed about business management trends in a new way
- can reliably test the relevance of trends for their own company
- can find suitable implementation partners if needed
The project aims to pave the way for modern business management methods for Berlin SMEs and thus increase their competitiveness.
Project result:
The project result consists of developing an interactive innovation radar for small and medium-sized enterprises in the Berlin economy. “InnoRadar” aims to provide SMEs with a view into the future that would otherwise only be available to large corporations.
The information and service offering to be developed will be provided via a web-based platform. In the longer term, the portal can be used as a national benchmark portal or, beyond that, for international comparison.