Our Research Projects

CAPPA seeks to improve the research on IP services and IP service providers. Based on the premliminary works in the IP Industry BaseExternal link, CAPPA builds a comprehensive data set on the activities and the mobility of patent attorneys that have served as representatives before the European Patent Office during the last ten years. Once established and fulfilling sufficiently high thresholds on data quality, the data set will be regularly updated and used to investigate career patterns of patent attorneys and their role as intermediaries in the intellectual property market. This includes among others the role of relationship capital and the development of expertise in specific areas of the IP market. The project is supported by the EPO's Academic Research ProgrammeExternal link.

Duration: since January 2018–June 2019

iDivExternal link, the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research, is a DFG research centre with approximately 300 employees and members based primarily in Halle, Jena and Leipzig. In iDiv researchers from 30 nations and from various disciplines establish the scientific basis for the sustainable management of our planet’s biodiversity.

Together with the iDiv management we build iDiv skills, the centre-wide Competence Map. This platform has been designed to facilitate integration and collaboration between all iDiv employees and members by compiling the expert knowledge in an easily accessible format. iDiv skills allows all members to easily find colleagues who have the expertise they are looking for, to keep track of their own skills, and to find out about the wide variety of knowledge that exists within iDiv. In the future, we aim to make the competence maps available to other research organizations.

Duration: February 2018–July 2018

In oncology there is a great shortage of structured and quality-assured services that are understandable for patients and can be used independently.
 
The PIKKO project is funded by the Innovation Fund of the Joint Federal Committee and supplements the standard care system in Saarland with an additional advisory and information path. The three central elements hereby are the provision of an Onko-pilot, the offer of a specialized oncological consultation as well as the implementation of an Onko-database. It is a consortium project of the German Cancer Society e.V., the Saarland Cancer Society e.V., the University Hospital Jena, the IKK Southwest, the Techniker Krankenkasse and the Knappschaft.
 
The contents of the Onko-database are created by the German Cancer Society e.V. and made available to the participating patients via a web-based application free of charge. This allows the patient at any time an independent, barrier-free and quality assured information access. In order for the programming to be implemented in a conceptual and target group oriented way, a project-accompanying supervision is carried out by Prof. Dr. Ing. Lutz Maicher.

The chair for Technology Transfer of the University of Jena coordinates the NIR-VANA ProjectExternal link (Networking Innovation Room for Added Value Networking Alliances) funded by the European Commission under the H2020 programme, INNOSUP 6. The project consortium counts furthermore with participation of Fraunhofer IWM from LeipzigExternal link, La Salle University from BarcelonaExternal link, three EEN (European Enterprise Network) members: Veneto Innovazione from VeniceExternal link, Swerea from GoteborgExternal link and Impulse BrusselsExternal link as well as IKMIBExternal link, a Turkish association of companies.

The partners will co-create a new open/smart innovation layer combining and integrating the existing platforms which offer different services able to cover the whole process of innovation for a third party and validate it with 800 SMEs, 100 innovation advisors, 10 EEN Members and 1 SME Association.

The main goal of the project is to promote the online collaboration of SMEs during the entire innovation process through the designing and implementation of a new service that will be provided by innovation advisors.

The specific project goals are:

• Help innovation advisors enrich their current activities for the benefit of SMEs with online tools that automate many of the time-consuming elements of their role
• Promote the acquisition of new skills for the innovation advisors to use current online platforms and to guide the SMEs throughout the online collaboration process for innovation
• Engage the SMEs into the EEN added value services for enhanced and open innovation support.
• Facilitate accurate reporting of EEN activities to the European Commission
• Involve SMEs from both innovative and non-traditionally innovative sectors into the innovation loop to increase their integration within the European Innovation Network.

Follow NIR-VANA at Researchgate hereExternal link

Duration: since April 2017

We are working together with the Berlin daily DER TAGESSPIEGELExternal link on a new projectExternal link, funded by the Volkswagen FoundationExternal link, for data journalism. Who really makes the laws in Germany? Mostly unnoticed by the public, lobbyists have an early influence on laws. The project group wants to decode the patterns of these processes. For this purpose, it wants to make transparent at which points in the legislative process which relations existed between government representatives, members of parliament and external actors. The Leipzig Fraunhofer Center for International Management and Knowledge Economy (IMW) is headed by Prof. Dr. med. Lutz Maicher and analyzed the data sets of existing initiatives such as "Open Parliament", "Lobbypedia", "Lobbycloud", "Lobby Radar" and "DIGIWHIST" in a structured way and supplemented them with new datasets from various sources. For this purpose, sources are to be used that are publicly available but have not been evaluated so far. The project team also wants to jointly develop new sources. Disclosure of legislative leverage mechanisms should provide journalists with new starting points for research. The scientists involved expect new approaches and methods for competition and competition analysis. Important areas of the information platform developed in the project should be available to the interested public after a transitional period.

Duration: November 2015–August 2016

PROGRESS-TT (Public Research Organisation GRowing Europe through best practice SolutionS for Technology Transfer) is an initiative of the European Comission within the H2020 framework. It seeks to transfer the expertise of Europe's leading Public Research Organisations (PROs) to those smaller PROs with the greatest potential to grow - gathering best practice to formulate Europe's most definitive technology transfer (TT) tools, methods and insight.

The project is implemented by a team of nine expert partners, among them Lutz Maicher and his team from Fraunhofer IMW. Other partners are distinguished European organizations like ASTP, University of Bologna, VTT, DSM and Philips. The team will work together to design and implement a capacity building programme for technology transfer professionals that includes:

• Definition of a capacity building strategy which defines capacity building roadmaps for TTOs.
• Training, workshops, bootcamps and e-learning delivered to emerging PROs and TT funds to develop their core skills.
• Intensive coaching and mentoring for high potential PROs to accelerate their TT activity. PROGRESS-TT will form 'teams' of experienced TTO performers, industry, funds and high potential PROs to develop capability, capacity, opportunity, desire, and to build a supportive TT environment.
• Improved access to finance by bringing established and emerging funds together to share best practice and identify cross-border opportunities.

The official website of PROGRESS-TT is hereExternal link.

Find PROGRESS-TT on Twitter hereExternal link.

Duration: January 2015–December 2017

One of the best illustrations of our research is the IP Industry BaseExternal link (IPIB). The IPIB is a competitive intelligence platform for continuous monitoring and assessment of the IP service industry. The IP service industry encompasses all companies which provide services around the creation, prosecution and commercialisation of Intellectual Properties. It collects and analyses datapoints from heterogenous sources with the goal of creating a coherent picture on the current status and the ongoing development in this industry. The Playground of the IPIBExternal link provides some example how the data behind the project can be used. The IPIB needs registration but is a free service from the Competitive Intelligence Research Group at Fraunhofer IMW.

You can see further projectsExternal link of the Competitive Intelligence Research Group at Fraunhofer IMW which are closely related to the IP Industry Base.

Duration: 2012–ongoing