innovations-wissen.de

The specialized portal for strategy and innovation knowledge

More than ever strategy competence is important in particular in mechanical engineering companies and related industries. Strategy competence means recognizing success potentials from tomorrow early and accessing of these success potentials just in time. These mainly mediumsize companies are badly prepared for this. There is however no lack of methods, but a lack of knowledge of relevant methods and their application.

In BMBF network project “strategic product and process planning (SPP)”, a knowledge base for strategic planning was developed and introduced exemplary in cooperation with six representative member companies of the VDMA. There are manuals, process steps and methods as well as Excel-templates, check lists and case studies on the website. Thus strategic planning of products and production systems is made easy.

The partners and operators

The project partners, Heinz Nixdorf Institute of the Paderborn University (Professor Gausemeier), the machine tool laboratory of the RWTH Aachen (Professor Schuh), the chair of product development TU Munich (Professor Lindemann) as well as the management consultancy UNITY AG from Büren, have developed the knowledge base further to the specialized portal www.innovations-wissen.de for strategy and innovation knowledge. The newly founded company SPP GmbH operates this specialized portal.

How to work practically with the portal:

Based on a short questionnaire about the company’s situation one of five strategic directions is suggested to the user (market penetration, market innovation, product innovation, market product innovation and technology innovation). A guide line is assigned to each strategic direction. The guide line market penetration is represented exemplary in the picture (left part). Method alternatives are assigned to each process step. References to the method selection (expenditure, method knowledge etc.) are also shown. The methods are precisely described and visualized on the basis of a picture (picture middle part). An example of an Excel-template is represented on the right part of the picture. The user can individually arrange the methods for the appropriate task and save them under “My Innovation”.

Cooperation with business-wissen.de

The two specialized portals www.innovations-wissen.de and www.business-wissen.de have been cooperating since August 2006. Approx. 50,000 customers are member of the portal www.business-wissen.de and receive up to date management information. Employees can find practicable contents for their personal further training and the exchange of experiences on the platform. The knowledge of both specialized portals is available by means of a “combination membership”. Internet users can use contents of both portals without any limits for an annual price of 79 Euro (instead of the single memberships of 49 euro for each).