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and ZHAW Zurich University of Applied sciences, Institute of Sustainable development, Postfach 805, CH-8401 Winterthur, Switzerland*Corresponding author.
'which was carried out in 2009 by the Joint research Centre-Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (JRC-IPTS) for the Bureau of European Policy Advisors (BEPA) of the European commission (EC).
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From global challenges to dedicated, technological, collaborative research projects Kerstin Cuhls1,,*Alexander Bunkowski2 and Lothar Behlau2 1fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation research, Breslauer Straße 48,76139 Karlsruhe,
kerstin. cuhls@isi. fraunhofer. de One urgent mission for European research is to focus on the grand challenges of our time.
We discuss how this mission was incorporated into a Fraunhofer corporate programme that takes on global challenges by stimulating collaborative research projects across knowledge domains.
Fraunhofer's strategic R&d planning predominantly takes place at the level of its 60 institutes and its six groups of institutes, each with similar technological scope.
and strategiicall develop research themes across its institutes. In this paper, we address the question of global challenges, their definition,
why and how Fraunhofer can best direct its overarching research topics towards solutions for some of the global challenges.
The idea The Lund Declaration (Lund Declaration 2009) formulated a request that European research should focus on the grand challenges of our time, moving beyond current rigid thematic approaches.
The Fraunhofer Society is Europe's largest contract research organisation and is taking this request seriously,
by adapting its corporate process for defining and developiin research themes across its institutes. Fraunhofer's strategic R&d planning predominantly takes place at the level of its 60 institutes and its six groups of institutes, each with a similar technological scope.
The strategic planning activities are complemented by a process which aims to identify and strategically develop research themes across institutes (Fraunhofer Future topics).
This process is repeated every three years (Klingner and Behlau 2008. In order to differentiate from the rather technologydriive processes of the past,
and how Fraunhofer can best direct its strategic research towards solutions for some of the global challenges. 2. Framework:
How does one of the largest research organisations in Europe reorient itself towards these challenges? For this, we need first of all to look at the Fraunhofer Society itself. 3. The Fraunhofer approach 3. 1 Strategic R&d planning within the Fraunhofer governance model Future-oriented technology analysis (FTA APPROACHES have been used within corporate strategic R&d planning at Fraunhofer for several years.
When assessing the scope and impact of these activities, it is useful to consider the specifics of the‘Fraunhofer innovation system
'and the role of strategic R&d planning at the corporate level within this system. With a total budget of E1. 65 billion in 2010, Fraunhofer is the largest contract research organisation in Europe.
Fraunhofer's contract research turnover has three main sources. Roughly one-third is provided through basic funding by the German government.
Compared to other publicly funded research organisations in Germany, the share of industry revenues is relatively high and a unique feature of Fraunhofer.
At the same time, cooperation between various knowledge domains within 60 Fraunhofer institutes is needed to address complex interdisciplinary system approaches in R&d.
and intensifies cooperation between institutes to fully utilise the strength of its broad R&d portfolio with various measures.
Within the groups, institutes plan and strategically align their respective R&d portfolios. Another platform of cooperation is built by the 20 Fraunhofer alliances, in
Moreover, Fraunhofer headquarters fund internal research programmes for joint R&d projects in order to support cooperation between the institutes.
FTA in this context supports Fraunhofer's strategic R&d planning. Hence, it needs to be oriented action
Papers on foresight studies or specific technological R&d trends were analysed and evaluated as the starting point. Experts with different technological backgrounds met in workshops to discuss
and assess the future relevance of certain technologies by extrapolating the current R&d portfolio to the future.
European research must focus on the grand challenges of our time moving beyond current rigid thematic approaches. This calls for a new deal among European institutions and Member States, in which European and national instruments are aligned well
Therefore, every research organisation and every actor in the innovation system has to position itself or himself in 236.
and developed by at least one dedicated (and centrally funded) R&d project of significant size. That means‘real'prototypes or results developed in a collaborative manner are expected from the projects Section 4 explains this process in more detail. 4. Methodology of the 2010 process 4. 1 The concept of the 2010 future-oriented
and develop research topics across the Fraunhofer knowledge domains represented by the institutes and groups of institutes.
Each technological solution approach was rated in terms of its fit with the Fraunhofer R&d portfolio and clustered into solution fields.
Perform dedicated technological R&d projects: the projects should be supported by technologies from Fraunhofer and need to produce results that really offer a solution for a part of the problem..
First impact More than 130 Fraunhofer research teams participated in a first call and provided project ideas (see Fig. 1). Full project proposals were submitted by 20 consortia.
and technology organisations From an R&d management programme that is organised by international institutes with a similar background to Fraunhofer,
and technology organisations in Europe have their specific approaches to Fraunhofer future markets. 241 defining their R&d portfolio.
The Dutch research organisation, TNO, has a strong relationship with the Dutch government. Therefore, they have to discuss their portfolio plans with the relevant Dutch ministries.
VTT, the Finnish research organisation, has a rather centralised research and technology development portfolio development. Although VTT is a governmental agency
SINTEF is the largest independent research organisation in Scandinavia. It is also searching for‘practical solutions'.
noncommercial organisation investing the profits of its projects in new research, scientific equipment and competence development.
To date, none of these research organisations has tried to orient itself towards global challenges. Therefore, the Fraunhofer experiment is unique among independent research institutions. 6. 2 Impact of the Fraunhofer future-oriented process The FTA PROCESS described in this paper produced dedicated research projects
in which teams from different Fraunhofer knowledge domains worked towards Table 2. Megatrends in society, environment and economy Globalisation/localisation (And lack of control) of trade, capital and terrorism;
The five research projects that were selected started in 2011, so it is too early to evaluate their concrete impacts.
and outlook Using global challenges as a starting point for an internal FTA PROCESS within the corporate strategic R&d planning was a new approach for Fraunhofer.
but system solutions seem to be the future framework for joint research programmes, not only at a European level but also at the Fraunhofer level.
FTA as part of the strategic planning of a distributed contract research organisation',paper presented at Third International Seville Conference on FTA, held Seville, Spain, 16 7 october 2008.
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