Research & Programs - HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management

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Partners
April 1-3, 2009, the Center for Leading Innovation
& Cooperation (CLIC) presented the
English edition of the publication “Services
Made in Germany – A Travel Guide” at the
Technology Services Europe Conference
(TSE) held in Barcelona.
The Conference was co-presented by
AFSMI, SSPA, and TPSA – the three leading
professional associations in the services
and support industry. Focusing on the attributes
that make the European technology
services marketplace unique, the participants
explored how European-based and
multinational companies successfully meet
its service needs.
Kick-off for META project “ServProf”
Service quality through professional work
Following the successful completion of the
Travel Guide project, which illustrated
Germany’s highly innovative and future-
oriented service industry, CLIC at HHL and
Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-
Nürnberg (FAU) have taken on the leadership
of the META project “ServProf – Learning and
Living Service Professionalism.”
The project is part of the overall program “Innovation
through Services” which has been
set up and supported by the BMBF (Federal
Ministry of Education and Research). The
main goal of the META project will be to promote
the communication and exchange of
research results among and around the focus
groups and their sub-projects. Therefore,
there are also plans to establish a communication
platform, which will be accessible on
the website www.servprof.de before the end
of 2009.
A total of 58 sub-projects will concentrate on
a variety of service types or industries such
as care for the elderly, education, energy
consulting, retail sales or wellness. The main
research issue will be to identify drivers and
International book presentation:
Services Made in Germany –
A Travel Guide
constraints which enhance or hinder professionalism
and expertise in services. At the
end of April, CLIC’s Executive Director Dr.
Marcus Kölling and new CLIC staff members
Angelika Pößl and Stefan Thallmaier met Professor
Dr. Ingeborg Bootz from DLR, the proj-
ect executing organization, and the members
from AOC Group, a subcontracting
company, in Berlin for the project kick-off.
Major topics of discussion were the design of
the interactive communication platform and
the coordination of project tasks between
CLIC and AOC Group.
While AOC Group will conduct a qualitative
analysis of all sub-projects internally, it is
CLIC’s responsibility to provide a sound overview
of current research on service professionalism
on a national and an international
scale, develop specific policy recommendations
and identify outstanding research questions
that require investigation.
HHL NEWS – SUMMER 2009
The Travel Guide gives insights into the German
service industry, showing remarkable
examples of innovation. For example, you
can read about fascinating services offered
by Flowline, a German company providing
service engineering in Hollywood, what
bookkeeping will look like in the future, or
how a “carefree system” for machines
works.
The Guide is a product of the project “Innovative
services on the way to world class”,
which was supported by the BMBF (Federal
Ministry of Education and Research).
Innovation research at CLIC
During the course of the 2 nd research forum
hosted by the BMBF (Federal Ministry of Educa-
tion and Research) entitled “Working – Learning –
Developing Skills. Potential for Innovation in a
Modern Working Environment” and held April 2-3,
2009, CLIC presented current research results
from its projects “GENIE” and “OPEN-I”. In these
projects, CLIC focuses on the management of
open innovation communities in companies and
on the management of innovation networks in
the software industry. In the project “OPEN-I,” CLIC
examines the role of governance and controlling
in open innovation communities. Communities
offer companies an alternative innovation mecha-
nism to classical research and development de-
partments. By allowing transparency of input and
output, controlling concepts based on social soft-
ware platforms are a central lever in encouraging
acceptance of open innovation approaches
in companies. CLIC’s “GENIE” project focuses on
the stabilization of the German software indus-
try. In an industry that consists mainly of SMEs,
innovations are often the result of a combination
of ideas supplied by several parties. Therefore,
success depends particularly on the ability to
transform joint ideas into new standards. Starting
from the recognition that creating cooperations
is an essential factor in this process, “GENIE” aims
to develop an integrated innovation and compe-
tence management system to promote the growth
of innovation processes in German software
companies.