Become a member of the INC o the RWTH Aachen Campus and feel the pulse of technology and innovation management. You decide which topics we will research and adjust the format of our advanced training to your individual needs. Connect yourself with the community of experts and gain new knowledge from each interexchange.
By choosing one of our three membership models BASIC, BUSINESS or PREMIUM you will profit from our extensive service offer.
As a member of the INC Invention Center, you are part of our growing community of companies from diverse industries. During recurrent community meetings, you get the opportunity to exchange with ‘the real practitioners‘ and to explore your personal network. Our virtual community portal allows remote access to the latest news and your TIM network at RWTH Aachen Campus.
A variety of perspectives guaranteed: The diversity of the registered companies is an essential success factor for us. Our members come from different market segments and technology fields and thus guarantee a maximum of different perspectives and approaches to current problems and future challenges.
In cooperation with the Karrierepool of RWTH Aachen University, we record your requirements as well as your search profiles and find high potentials who perfectly match your requirements. Through our exclusive access to the RWTH Aachen Campus and the nearby institutes, our recruiting event offers the opportunity to get in touch with Ph.D. students as well as the years best 5 % students from RWTH Aachen University.
In a one day workshop, you can try out and apply current methods and approaches to selected case studies. Take the learnings into your company and find solutions, approaches, and impulses for your individual scopes. Join this innovation workshop for the practical transfer of new methods and tools by using case studies.
Get an overview of selected lighthouse projects, centers, and startups at RWTH Aachen Campus. In short pitches followed by in-depth discussions, representatives of centers, institutes, companies, and start-ups present their current as well as future research and development projects. Be part of “the next e.GO” and define future cooperations with the involved players of RWTH Aachen Campus. Both network talks will also be partly available via webex (pitches only).
Technological differentiation and operational efficiency are no longer sufficient to remain competitive in the long term. In many cases, new business models are the basis of disruptive innovation which enables market success. The competence to recognize technological potentials at an early stage, develop them in a targeted way and to convert them into products in the market with the suitable business model will decide whether to achieve success or failure in the future. A prerequisite is a consistent technology and innovation strategy. In numerous lectures from science and industry, you will learn how to design an appropriate technology and innovation management with suitable processes, structures, and methods.
The “Innovative Tuesday” is an interactive network between the local business community, researchers and students in the area of innovation. It is presented by the RWTH Business School, the Chamber of Industry and Commerce and the TIME Research Area of the RWTH Aachen. Welcome a Tuesday evening each month all of you who are interested in innovation management in the INC Invention Center on the RWTH Aachen Campus. All events will be held in English to promote exchange beyond national borders. International students of RWTH Aachen University will participate as well.
The virtual INC Community is part of the RWTH Aachen Campus virtual network for all companies immatriculated at RWTH Aachen Campus. The community portal offers the INC members a wide variety of information: Up-to-date news, relevant dates and event announcements from the INC Community as well as project documentation can be found within the portal. In addition, the community offers all INC members the opportunity to exchange and network virtually at any time, beyond our physical events.
Our premium members are firmly integrated as an advisory board into the strategic orientation and the content-related design of the INC Invention Center. In this way, we can guarantee our industry-relevant, state-of-the-art offering.
We develop differently. Our innovation process is based on a hybrid approach of classic Stage Gate, Agile Development, and Design Thinking. Through regular prototyping and early customer validation, we achieve a goal-oriented development that focuses on the customer. We offer methods, locations and coaching for a fast implementation of your innovation projects.
The ability to successfully innovate in a timely manner at little costs becomes a crucial competitive factor across all industries. Yet, companies struggle to systematically explore and develop new business areas outside their core. Often, a lack of competencies in new technologies, development processes that are solely optimized for exploitation activities as well as rigid organizational structures create insuperable innovation barriers.
While transforming the entire organization into an innovation machine is a long-term project, setting-up a separate innovation path that is purely focused on exploring new business are-as provides a powerful alternative.
Acceleration-as-a-Service is a structured, outcome-oriented program that allows companies to explore new business areas without the need to change their organization. We provide all the ingredients needed to identify new business opportunities and make them scale: from a network of over 350 institutes, experienced leaders capable to drive development projects and a large machine park to a unique eco-system of industrial partners.
Our workshops constitute the framework for a methodical supporting innovation process – starting with the idea and ending with feasible services, products, and business models. With distance to business routine, we elicit the enthusiasm for innovation amongst your Co-Workers and support them in understanding clients and realizing breakthrough ideas.
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What is the meaning of megatrends according to your entrepreneurial future? Together we systematically analyze relevant megatrends and derive specific innovation fields.
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We vitalize encrusted thinking-processes and enthuse your Co-Workers to change practices, which is a prerequisite for achieving accepted and supported implementation processes in your company. We focus on holistic thinking – starting with the idea and ending with a business model innovation, while the “entrepreneur’s spirit” awakens in your Co-Workers.
© unsplash / Steven Lelham
We identify the disruption-risks of your products, business models and value chain. This relentless outside-in perspective on your company allows exposure to business risks and product substitutions. Hence, you can prevent imminent disruptions of your business at an early strage.
The INC Invention Center offers its members broad access to INCworX, a place to realize disruptive innovations. This creative landscape offers room for experiments, inspiration, and networking. A real climate of innovation is guaranteed because of the change of perspective that our innovation facility promotes.
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Working together in a large, friendly and open space. Here, Co-Workers can benefit from each other, actively interact with other companies and projects or realize joint projects. In the Collaboration Space, our members have the opportunity to work with us for a longer period of time. Here, we pursue the idea of paving the way for impulses that emerge from very different perspectives on one and the same topic. Quite simply because the innovation managers from the various sectors can easily obtain feedback – for example during a conversation at the coffee machine.
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Our philosophy for increasing development speed and reducing development costs is a combination of the classic Stage-Gate, Scrum and Design Thinking and puts the customer at the center of your development.
The process is classically divided into phases at the end of which a gate is passed through. The phases between the gates (the stages) are based on Scrum and are divided into different sprints from 2 to 4 weeks in which the project team works independently. Learn and adapt this concept for your hardware development. Many companies are already successfully using this hybrid innovation and development process.
With our numerous network events, we actively shape the transfer of knowledge between science and industry. As an INC member, you can participate in consortium projects, cross-industry groups, coaching sessions, the start-up screener, or take advantage of our extensive range of workshops – to design, organize and optimize your professional technology and innovation management and to expand and deepen your knowledge of technology.
Representatives from different market segments and technology fields come together in Cross Industry Groups to discuss and operate on various topics. Cross Industry transfer of know-how and mutual coaching are the primary areas of focus. We moderate and document the results for you. Below you find an overview of our Cross Industry Groups for 2019:
Through the variety of consortium projects, you will obtain an overview of innovative technologies/trends, clarification of issues relevant to you and your partners, and elaborate on technologies, market studies, business cases, and roadmaps.
What makes companies successful, and how can I learn from them? The aim of our benchmarking is to identify successful and practice-oriented solutions in the field of technology and innovation management in order to benefit from them. To identify best practices, we conduct regular screenings in the form of an international empirical study. The benchmarking will be accompanied by a visit and the award of the Top 5 Best-Practice Companies. The study results will be presented at the closing event.
On the digital platform for technology information KEX.net and receive well structured and continuously updated information on all additive manufacturing fields of application, latest technologies, new materials, pre-and postprocessing, technology experts and latest trends.
Together with our partners Fraunhofer IPT, TIME Research Area and the Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering WZL, we offer practice-oriented education and training. Realistic case studies ensure the best possible feasibility in your company. Experience how you design structures and processes and increase the acceptance of necessary changes in your company – from hands-on practical training day to the certification course for the C-Level.
Do you know your innovation-readiness level? We conduct the Quick Check with you and analyze the strengths and fields of action of your company. The relevant criteria were developed on the basis of the benchmarking and analyses of the top 5 best-practice companies and have already been successfully applied on several occasions. At the end of the audit, we jointly develop initial measures and show how you can achieve your innovation goals.