Steinbeis Europa
Established in 1990 as the operational unit of the Commissioner for European Affairs of the Minister of Economics, and since then differentiating its business portfolio, the annual budget of about 2 MEUR comes mostly from publicly funded projects (EU, national, regional). SEZ core activities within the Innovation System of Baden-Wuerttemberg include
- Supporting SME's and Universities to get involved in European RTD Projects and in trans-national technology transfer cooperation.
- Supporting the regional key players (regional development agencies etc) in getting involved in transactional networks.
- Supporting transactional initiatives of the region for good practice exchange in innovation issues like entrepreneurship, business succession, women entrepreneurship, incubators and start-up support from universities.
- Supporting the implementation of regional foresight strategies in regional innovation.
For the EU’ DG Enterprise, SEZ runs as a consortium leader the Innovation Relay Centre (IRC) for Southern Germany, Thuringia and the German speaking part of Switzerland, and acted as the twinning partner to establish the IRC in Prague. The range of SEZ’ trans-national technology transfer activities includes technical co-operation, commercial co-operation with technical assistance, licensing, manufacturing and joint ventures, and the organisation of workshops, brokerage events, and partner search for RTDI proposals. SEZ is also involved in the IRC thematic groups focusing on key industrial sectors. It is active in the Innovating Regions (IRE) thematic networks to promote co-operation and exchange of best practices like SAIL (technology transfer from academia), ProWomEn (promoting woman entrepreneurship), and VERITE (Virtual Innovation Management Platform). Since 2001, SEZ acts as EUREKA regional contact point, and has previously carried out projects supported by programmes such as VALUE, INNOVATION, ADAPT, INTERREG, LEONARDO, and the different RTDI Framework programmes.
Also, Steinbeis Europa has taken part in the Foresight Expert’s groups constituted under the direction of the unit K2 “Science and Technology Foresight” of the DG Research, specifically, as a member of the TECHTRANS blueprint expert group.
