| Abstract Scope |
In the context of global challenges, such as pandemics, climate change or digitization, urgent and highly complex questions arise that require excellent, innovative research at the highest level to answer them. But what are the prerequisites for creative, excellent top-level research that finds urgently needed innovative solutions to acute problems?
Innovation processes are not one-way streets but occur in constant interaction between knowledge and application and hence rarely happen at one time in one place: Innovation frequently relies on collaborations between disciplines, across sectors and even beyond different regions. And sometimes it is based on chances of serendipity.
Dealing with global challenges requires more and more concentration and mutual inspiration of our knowledge, our powers and our methods as scientists. Productive interaction networks of diverse transfer relationships between different participants are needed for this. Quite often innovation is driven by the demands of exploration and happens in the development of a technique through application in the field. This kind of innovation includes new organizational forms of joint research, business models or social practices. |