Innovation Labs at 11 Universities Will Further Bavaria’s Academic Lead

The State of Bavaria is setting up 10 Innovation Labs at 11 universities. Ilse Aigner (the Bavarian Minister for Economic Affairs, Media, Energy & Technology) and her colleague Dr. Ludwig Spaenle (the Bavarian Minister of Education) announced this new measure today. To this end, the Bavarian platform for digitization (“Zentrum Digitalisierung.Bayern”, ZD.B) receives 2.2 million euro in funding.

Each Lab will receive 110,000 euro in annual funding. Their purpose is to confront students with real-world problems. To this end, they will bring together universities, startups and established businesses. “How can gamification help to make job assignments more exciting and thus reduce the error rate?” and “How can business processes be displayed on a smart watch?” are just two of the potential assignments.

As a result, the labs will enable students to create innovative solutions to current technology problems. In developing these all the way through the prototype stage, students will gain valuable practical experience in real software development and the field of digitization. To achieve these goals, the ZD.B will coordinate the Labs and assist them in creating the required network.

Innovation Labs Are Just One Part in an Integrated Effort to Sustain Bavaria’s Competitive Edge

The ZD.B platform is Bavaria’s dedicated effort to strengthening its academic landscape in the field of digitization even further. Previously, the ZD.B has created 20 new professorships in digitization. Moreover, it has established 10 research groups which encourage juniors to work on the thematic fields relevant for digitization.

Due to close collaboration between universities and businesses, Bavaria has been a leader in new business fields and technologies for decades. In their entirety, all these measures therefore document the Bavarian government’s commitment to continuously renewing this competitive edge.