Integrated technology transfer concept for fostering innovation in SMEs

The digital transformation affects all parts of industrial value creation. Major levers are the collection and usage of digital data, the interlinking of formerly independent systems and a transition from traditional products to integrated product-service systems. It is characterized by significant changes of business processes resulting in dynamic value creation networks. More than ever, innovations are a key factor for ensuring competitiveness within the global market. In this context, small and medium-sized enterprises with their characteristics are particularly affected. With limited resources, they rely on innovations, which are directly tailored to the customer product. Because of this practice, they may overlook strategically important trends or even lose track of entire technological advancements. In this context, the transfer of technology and knowledge is a critical success factor. New technologies or methods developed by research institutions could provide long-term market advantages for SMEs. However, despite a tremendous diversity of research results, the possibilities for tapping this source of valuable knowledge often remains unused. This mainly results from a gap between research and its commercialization in industrial applications - a phenomenon called “the valley of death”. Typical barriers are insufficient knowledge of available technologies, a lack of creativity within the identification of application potentials or simply missing resources. In the scope of the digital transformation, additional barriers hamper cooperation between SMEs and research institutions. At present, there is no approach to solve this challenge sufficiently. Therefore, we present an integrated technology transfer concept, focusing the increase of the digital maturity of SMEs. The approach merges a (1) technology platform concept and a (2) multi-stage model for the entire transfer. It includes the initiation phase, the strategic planning and the implementation of a project-based transfer. We present (3) formats for the different stages in a structured manner. We verified our approach by a case study: the leading-edge cluster “it's OWL” which is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research. By transferring technologies and methods for advanced mechatronic systems within the scope of tailored transfer projects, the cluster follows an innovative path. The case study provides 170 projects established since 2014. Based on the platform with its bundled technologies, specific demands of SMEs are tackled. Furthermore, we present an (4) evaluation method which allows to validate the transfer impact. To ensure an optimal effectiveness, the maturity level of SMEs should be developed in manageable steps. Thus, we present (5) methods to assess the current state. The findings serve as an input for the planning of the transfer process. The main result of our research is an innovative technology transfer concept, integrating the (1) functional principle of a technology platform and a (2) multi-stage model to successfully overcome the valley of death. Apart from that, we developed (3), (4), (5) methods for the strategic managing of transfer activities. A key factor to support SMEs to exploit the technological opportunities with respect to digitalization is a high adaptability of the concept to the company-specific demands