How can U.S. universities develop their innovation ecosystems following market-tested principles developed by Fraunhofer? A Purdue-Fraunhofer team has been exploring this question. A global leader in innovation, Fraunhofer represents a network of 67 research institutes that has generated some of the world’s most successful applied research initiatives.

The ideas from the Purdue-Fraunhofer team are now being deployed in a pilot program at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Here are some insights from the work so far:

• Innovation, the process of creating value from ideas, represents a set of disciplines. These disciplines, when properly practiced and deployed, create a continuous loop of development between technologies and markets.

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Fraunhofer IAO: Jaochim Warschat joachim.warschat@iao.fraunhofer.de

Antonino Ardillio antonino.ardilio@iao.fraunhofer.de

Purdue University: Ed Morrison edmorrison@purdue.edu

Scott Hutcheson hutcheson@purdue.edu

Duane Dunlap ddunlap@purdue.edu

Leveraging universities to accelerate innovationA small team from Purdue and Fraunhofer IAO has been exploring how U.S. universities can support innovation more productively. Here are some insights.

• In the past 10 years, the availability of computing power and big data has opened the door to creating highly productive new approaches to systematic innovation.

• We can think of a technology for a manufacturing firm as consisting of two components: processes and materials. For a service firm, technology consists of a process and some form of data or information. These definitions, although abstract, open the door to innovation opportunities.

• For example, U.S. manufacturers focus too much on the products they produce, not the technologies they have mastered. Because this view of their business is too confining, they do not see potential new market opportunities very clearly. The same is generally true for service-based businesses.

• For most technology-related businesses, the starting point of their innovation journey begins by characterizing their technology in a far more detailed way.

• Universities have a vital role to play in accelerating U.S. innovation, but this role is not well understood or practiced. Innovation involves far more than commercializing intellectual property.

• Universities have large inventories of unused patents. These inventories represent a significant investment for which there is little return. New, more disciplined approaches to innovation can be applied to evaluate and identify promising market opportunities for existing patents.

• Identifying and addressing new market opportunities for a specific technology requires an infrastructure that most small and medium-size firms do not have. Universities can fill the gap.

• However, in order for universities to support growth among small and mid-sized enterprises they must develop

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Universities have developed research systems to convert money (government grants, mostly) into knowledge. Yet, their innovation systems — to convert knowledge into money — need more extensive development, beyond promoting technology transfer and encouraging start-ups. For universities, government funds the lower half of the circle, while the market funds the top half. Fraunhofer has developed “market-facing” principles to accelerate the conversion of knowledge into money. The Purdue-Fraunhofer team is adapting these principles to strengthen U.S. universities.

The New Jersey Innovation Institute is piloting ideas developed by the Purdue-Fraunhofer team.

a new type of infrastructure around their campuses. The good news is that this innovation infrastructure does not require major new investments to start. Most universities already possess all the assets with which to develop this infrastructure.

• To date, most universities have focused on their start-up ecosystems. They have not focused on their innovation ecosystems designed to accelerate growth among existing companies. Start-up ecosystems and innovation ecosystems are significantly different from one another.

• Accelerating innovation among existing firms is likely to have far more significant regional impact than focusing on start-ups, but a university should do both.

• Developing a university-based innovation infrastructure involves integrating different types of disciplines, frameworks, smart data platforms and data visualization, all designed to link technology and market development on platforms. Firms need ready access to these platforms, but they cannot build and support them alone. That is where the university comes in. Universities have the assets to develop these innovation platforms to support high-growth firms.

• A focus on innovation ecosystems represents a new direction for most universities. Traditionally, a university research system is designed to take money and convert it into knowledge. And innovation ecosystem converts knowledge into money, a fundamentally different focus and flow with which universities are generally unfamiliar.

• Building an innovation ecosystem around the university campus should be done carefully. Universities have sensitive immune systems that, ironically, attack new, potentially disruptive ideas. Shrinking budgets make this immune system even more sensitive. Successful innovation ecosystems will emerge through continuous

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Connecting technology development to market opportunities is a major challenge. Technologies are both converging and shifting faster than markets develop. Universities can smooth the process.

experimentation: small, promising collaborations that grow over time.

Developing agile innovation platformsThe small Purdue/Fraunhofer team is integrating Purdue’s work in agile strategy — Strategic Doing — with Fraunhofer’s sophisticated innovation and technology management platforms. The team is focused on designing a new 4D model of university-based innovation: modular platforms that are practical, scalable, flexible and agile. On these platforms, complex collaborations can quickly form. These innovation platforms — customized to each university’s portfolio of innovation assets — would be designed around market-tested tools, simple rules and the discipline of relentless experimentation to explore complex, shifting market opportunities. They combine the extensive innovation assets of U.S. universities with the market-facing principles, frameworks and disciplines that Fraunhofer has pioneered.

About Fraunhofer IAOFraunhofer, based in Germany, represents a network of 67 research institutes and over 23,000 employees focused on applied research. Most of the Fraunhofer institutes concentrate on a specific area of technology development. Fraunhofer IAO, based in Stuttgart, focuses on innovation and technology management across technologies.

Learn moreIf you are interested in learning more about Purdue’s work on technology and innovation management with Fraunhofer IAO, contact Ed Morrison (edmorrison@purdue.edu) or Scott Hutcheson (hutcheson@purdue.edu). Please put “Purdue-Fraunhofer” in the subject line of your e-mail.

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