Fraunhofer future markets: 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,
That means following the principles of corporate social responsibility and developing new ways for Fraunhofer research markets of the future.
What are the global challenges and questions of the future? In this paper, we therefore address the question of global challenges, their definition,
the current government systems are incapable of tackling current and future global interconnected challenges. Boden et al. 2010:
between the current methods of production, consumption and the future availability of nonreneewabl resources. between a general and simultaneous process of increasing economic interdependence and differentiation. between spatial proximity in the context of accelerated urbanisation
The State of the Future reports of the UN Millennium Project can be regarded as another source for‘megatrends'and long-lasting challenges for the future.
The challenges pointed out in the State of the Future reports are based on the UN Millennium Challenges and Goals Project (2005.
The State of the Future reports that are published every year take stock of these permanent challenges and report on the developments:
To the best knowledge of the present authors, the State of the Future report is the most comprehensive
the identification of strategic future topics that will produce future contract research markets for Fraunhofer; serving urgent societal needs;
and results should be quickly implementable to create the maximum impact in the organisation in the shortest possible time. 3. 2 Former future-oriented processes at Fraunhofer (technology-driven) In 2004,
Fraunhofer performed its first future-oriented process at a corporate level to identify strategic future topics across the institutes.
and assess the future relevance of certain technologies by extrapolating the current R&d portfolio to the future.
However, dedicated internal funding for each topic was not inherent in the process. 3. 3 Rationale for a new 2010 future-oriented process (demand-driven) The rationale of the Fraunhofer approach started with the assumption that there are obviously science
but rather projects with potentially high impacts on the societal questions of the future. The aim of the 2010 process was that, ultimately,
each future topic would be promoted 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
The most convincing projects were funded internally. 4. 2 Deriving Fraunhofer-specific challenges from global challenges The 2009 State of the Future report of the UN Millennium Project was chosen (Glenn et al. 2009) as a starting point for deriving the Fraunhofer
and widely accepted metastudy Figure 1. Fraunhofer future processes. Fraunhofer future markets. 237 defined 15 global challenges.
In this first part of the process, mainly politically driven proposed actions as well as technological approaches to solutions of the challenges were identified from the State of the Future report,
The State of the Future Report was chosen because it is established an reporting system that is provided by the World Federation of UN Associations. 280 international experts from 32 teams contribute to the surveys it is based on.
and ask which of them are crucial Figure 2. Challenges featured in the State of the Future report. 238.
so that in the end there is support for the future Fraunhofer projects..Bring together different knowledge domains: the projects that should be funded are supposed not to be driven technology,
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
we expect this new demand-driven approach to have an impact on other Fraunhofer future processes:
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.
References Blind, K.,Cuhls, K. and Grupp, H. 2001)‘ Personal attitudes in the assessment of the future of science and technology:
Boden, M.,Cagnin, C.,Carabias, V.,Haegemann, K. and Ko nno la, T. 2010)‘ Facing the future:
Office for Official Publications of the EU. Cuhls, K.,Blind, K. and Grupp, H. 2002) Innovations for our Future.
Glenn, J. C.,Gordon, T. J. and Florescu, E. 2009)‘ 2009 State of the Future;
Future radar 2030 (Zukunftsradar 2030)',International Journal of Foresight and Innovation policy, forthcoming special issue. Lund Declaration.
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