“Engine Rooms” of Regional Innovation at re:publica

re:publica is one of Europe’s leading conferences on the digital society. It takes place annually in Berlin and brings together experts from the fields of media, politics, technology and culture to discuss current issues relating to the internet, digitalisation and society. This week, 21 clusters for future, research campuses and former leading clusters showcased their success stories there. They demonstrated how scientific excellence can be translated into concrete solutions – from new medicines and energy-efficient AI to hydrogen technologies and new mobility concepts.

These innovation ecosystems, funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR), possess considerable potential that is already contributing to the High-Tech Agenda Germany (HTAD) and can be further expanded through it. “With the High-Tech Agenda Germany, we are further expanding ‘Made in Germany’ value creation. Strong innovation ecosystems are crucial for scaling up and commercialising research in high-tech applications,” explained Dr. Alexandra-Gwyn Paetz, Head of the Department for Technological Sovereignty and Innovation at the BMFTR, on the re:publica stage. These ecosystems are about pooling expertise, jointly exploiting synergy effects, integrating start-ups and SMEs, creating short pathways between industry, science, development and application, and thereby developing internationally competitive locations and regions that put innovations into practice and create sustainable jobs.

At re:publica, the currently funded clusters for future and research campuses presented themselves together for the first time from 18 to 20 May. Together with the former leading clusters, they showcased themselves as “innovation engine rooms”. In doing so, they demonstrated how state-funded cluster policy works in practice and how the networks contribute to the emergence of new value chains in key technology fields. The clusters and campuses cover virtually all key technologies and strategic research fields of the High-Tech Agenda Germany – including quantum technology, health, biotechnology, mobility, AI and microelectronics.

It is crucial that the players in these strong innovation ecosystems are committed to raising the profile of their locations: only when economic and scientific excellence is visible, innovations emerge and the ecosystems become the “place to be” for the industry’s brightest minds. The BMFTR supports this with long-term funding: this amounts to up to nine years for the future clusters and up to 15 years for the research campuses. In this way, science, industry, politics and administration can create structures that unlock new value-creation potential in the long term.