OBSESSIVELY PROGRESSIVE

DR. THOMAS RAMGE IS A TECHNOLOGY SOCIOLOGIST WHO HAS PUBLISHED MORE THAN 15 AWARD ­WINNING NON ­ FICTION BOOKS. HE THINKS, WRITES AND SPEAKS AT THE CROSSROADS BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY, ECONOMICS AND SOCIETY. EVERY 14 DAYS, HE INTERVIEWS NERDS WITH A MISSION FOR HIS SPRIND PODCAST. BUT WHY? WHAT ARE HIS OBJECTIVES?

THOMAS, WHAT DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO SEE IN THE YEAR 2050?

THOMAS RAMGE: A huge sun shade at Lagrange point 1 that we can use to finely dim the sun’s radiation on Earth. This might allow us to solely reduce the temperature without causing chaotic side effects on the climate or the weather.

Yes, it has to be. I do not believe that we are going to be able to get climate change under control quickly enough on the technical and social development paths we are currently following. I am already aware of the dilemmas associated with solar geoengineering, but I think it would be negligent not to put all of our scientific effort into fully exploring the technological possibilities.

THAT IS QUITE A LARGE, PRACTICAL IDEA.

WHY DO YOU ALWAYS ASK YOUR GUESTS THE UTOPIAN 2050 QUESTION?

The technology discussion in German is often dominated by dystopian scenarios rather than utopian ones. We want to do something to combat that pessimistic attitude in this podcast by presenting desirable futures in which the technology of tomorrow is able to solve the problems of today. The vast majority of our guests are technology optimists who are researching and developing these technological solutions. So the technology ‘wish list’ question is only a natural one. But I do ask it with one reservation. My guests have to wish for one breakthrough innovation that is outside their own field of expertise. I notice that a lot of them actually want to say: “Well, what I am working on right now...” But the restriction on the question makes answering it a creative, interdisciplinary exercise. And that kind of exercise always ideally has some entertainment value as well. What is more, I always ask the question at the conclusion of the interview in the hope that as many of our regular listeners as possible will stay with us until the end because they will want to hear the guest’s answer. I do not know about anyone else, but I myself am always interested to see what they have to say.

YOU REFER TO YOUR GUESTS AS “NERDS WITH A MISSION.” HOW DO YOU SELECT THEM?

First of all, we look for innovators who are ready to make big leaps themselves, i.e., the type of researching entrepreneur or entrepreneurial researcher who can talk about their developments in an eloquent and instructive manner. Many of them are supported by SPRIND, but not all of them. The DARPA podcast is conceived as a window into the DARPA projects and organization. We very consciously cultivate increased openness and exchange with exciting minds from the entire innovation landscape in Germany. From my point of view, the podcast plays a double role here. It helps to increase awareness of us as an agency in the research and innovation scene. And in addition, we get access to people who we do not yet know.

BUT YOU DO NOT JUST INTERVIEW POTENTIAL OR ESTABLISHED INNOVATORS…

No, we also always like to interview people who think in an intelligent and scientific manner about the meta and cross-cutting issues related to favorable framework conditions for innovation. How much competition does innovation need? What forms of financing? Or how does one speed up the development of medicinal active ingredients by eliminating bureaucracy at which points? Top scientists with a mission in their area of specialty are naturally also always welcome. In fact, we have even interviewed two Nobel Prize winners, BENJAMIN LIST and STEFAN HELL. Sometimes we also use the podcast to report on the work being done by SPRIND. In that case, JANO COSTARD might present a new Challenge, or BARBARA DIEHL might talk about knowledge transfer. In the first episode of the year, I always interview RAFAEL LAGUNA about the ups and downs of the previous year and ask him for an outlook on the coming year, including critical questions. After all, he is used to those!

WHEN DO YOU FEEL LIKE A PODCAST INTERVIEW HAS BEEN A SUCCESS?

When the listeners and I, as the presenter, have been sucked into the guests’ world of thought. When they have infected us with their nerdy enthusiasm for their technical solutions, even if we cannot say at that moment how realistic the plans may be that they have taken the last 30 to 60 minutes to outline, often in great detail and with much self-confidence. This is why it is also so important to me to get to know the person and their motives a little better during our talk. That is in essence the art of journalism, with the goal that the interviewee forgets they are being recorded during the discussion. That is when guests are ready to talk openly, as if they were telling their story to a friend they had not seen in a long time. As a host, one can best accomplish that by doing more listening than talking, asking curious questions and not continually evaluating what the guest is saying. At the same time, I always attempt to achieve a good balance between scientific or technological depth and general comprehensibility.

“MAKING SCIENTIFIC OR TECHNOLOGICAL DEPTH GENERALLY COMPREHENSIBLE” HOW DOES THAT WORK? YOU WILL HAVE TO EXPLAIN THAT TO US A LITTLE… Our target group consists of intelligent listeners with an interest in science or technology. We naturally do not want to under-stimulate them by presenting complex topics in such a simplified manner that hardly any substance remains. At the same time, people who are not familiar with that area of specialty must be able to easily follow along, and the topic should interest more than just the members of the doctoral colloquium that our guest chairs on the side. When the discussion becomes too specialized and my “incompetence compensation competence” is no longer sufficient to follow along, I interject a few comprehension questions. Or I attempt to bring the talk back to a more generally understandable level.

LOTS OF ORGANIZATIONS PRODUCE PODCASTS. WHY DID SPRIND JOIN THEIR RANKS?

Our goal is to become the most relevant science and innovation podcast in Germany. That is an ambitious goal, especially for a public institution that does not primarily focus on scientific journalism. Nevertheless, I think it is possible we may reach this goal because we have the ability to assess where really exciting things are currently happening, and we have easy access to interesting guests at the same time. We do not yet have the reach that we would like to. Most episodes reach a total of 5,000 clicks across all podcast platforms. However, the qualitative feedback we receive tells us that we are reaching the right listeners: nerds with a mission, and lots of optimistic people in the German innovation ecosystem who are taking on the major Challenges of our day with science and technology.

STAY CURIOUS!

THANK YOU, THOMAS. ANY LAST WORDS?

WHAT BREAKTHROUGH INNOVATION WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO SEE BECOME REALITY BY 2050?

FREE CHOICE.

WHAT IS AT THE TOP OF YOUR WISH LIST?

April 26, 2021 #07

What I would really like to see is humanity “take wing” and colonize other planets, and I mean seriously colonize them. Perhaps Mars first. No return tickets. This will restore our pioneering spirit and gradually enable us to detach ourselves from this Earth. Prospectively we will have to do that one day anyhow, simply due to astronomical circumstances. We have to leave our cradle. And I hope that I will still be alive to see it happen. I will not be along for the ride, I have a fear of flying, but my wish for all of humanity is that we once again embark on such an adventure.

MARCH 15, 2021 #02

AND OF THE WEIZENBAUM INSTITUTE

That is a really tough question. I think I would like to see complete digitalization of the provisioning of public administrative data and a fully digitalized infrastructure for citizen services, for my university administration and for political action. That is a big task, but I think that would make life—with our daily civil rights and also our civil duties—so much easier if we could get all of our registration cards, etc., digitally. I also think this would help to encourage political participation, as I would suddenly be able to see how the senate is spending its budget and when the session meetings are scheduled. This would make it easier for me to take a more active part in sessions and submit my petitions. That could be a really great user experience, a citizenship data portal that is incredibly fun to use, a place where groups come together. A place where we could celebrate what you might call the beauty of data, because it simply makes clear how a city, a community, maybe even a state works, what administration means. That would be a really big thing, I think it could make a lot of things happen, make them happen more quickly and give the word ‘citizen’ a whole new meaning.

START­ UP INVESTOR

December 13, 2021 #24

When we look what types of diseases people in western nations are suffering from, we see that more than half of these diseases are avoidable. I would actually wish that we not just produce medication and train doctors to diagnose and treat these diseases, but that we actually attempt to prevent them from occurring in the first place. In my opinion, a disruptive innovation would be avoiding these preventable diseases by better educating people. That would in turn increase what is known as the ‘health span,’ the time in which a person lives without disease. We now live to be 80 but it is no fun when you are sick after 60 years of age. Furthermore, improving health education for the general public would also enable us to better protect ourselves from things like the infectious diseases that we currently see. I think we should make it easy for children to understand what risks modern life holds and how they can make the right decisions for handling these risks. Urban planners and architects should understand how creating areas to walk and ride bikes encourages people to exercise more and makes the population healthier in the long term. And our politicians should also understand that advertisements for fast food and cigarettes are not necessarily helpful. Lots of little things like that can add up to have a big impact.

JULY 5, 2021 #12

I would like to see multi-functional, self-driving passenger transportation. We are all spending lots of time working at home now, and whenever I actually have to drive to the office, I think about what a waste of time it is. I sit here, I drive my car or I ride the street car. Imagine there was an environmentally clean means of transport for multiple people at one time that took us from Point A to Point B. And inside this form of transportation I have a capsule with my own office, or where I can maybe exercise or sleep, or where I can sit with my family and do whatever, like play a game. In other words, an option for integrating the things that we do, but previously have done statically, into a motion mode.

DR.

“NATURAL PLASTICS”

November 8, 2021 #21

Nuclear fusion. When you look at all the problems and challenges this world is facing today as a whole, in the end it all comes down to energy. We simply need energy, and clean energy at that. Once we have solved that problem, everything else is much, much, much easier. Especially in regard to recycling, which sometimes requires more energy than starting from scratch again. I will be able to sleep better when we have solved that problem.

MAY 25, 2021 #09

I would like to see an artificial intelligence, I would like to have an app that made it possible to differentiate between information and opinion or commentary. That was great, in America things were better in the past, they say, there used to be more Trump that was entertaining, but naturally with a very, very sad and serious background. As someone with a humanistic education, or who has had to endure a humanistic education, even I notice that it is difficult for me to differentiate between fact and opinion. What I see in many discussions today is an opinion being communicated. I would like to see it being made clear that someone is giving me their opinion, even though they are trying to present it like fact. Then I can no longer say “oh, I did not know what” anymore afterward. It used to be that way a long time ago in the German newspaper FAZ, and they still do that today: opinions are printed in a different font and facts are kept separate. This is being lost in our society today.

CAPITAL INVESTOR

September 13, 2021 #17

Decarbonization. I believe that climate change, as one of the greatest challenges facing our generations, requires a wide variety of different attempts and approaches in order to find the one solution from among the many thousands of ideas that will perhaps help us, in a truly scalable manner, to stop climate change or to reach our climate goals worldwide.

PROF. DR. URSULA MÜLLER­WERDAN RESEARCHER AND MEDICAL DIRECTOR OF THE DEPARTMENT OF GERIATRICS AND MEDICAL GERONTOLOGY AT THE CHARITÉ BERLIN

June 6, 2022 #34

A household robot. Please, a household robot. Personally, I have the impression that digitalization is making incredible leaps forward, but robotics is not keeping up. Household robots, nursing robots, yes. Honestly, we all talk about the human touch that we need, but take a moment to consider if when you are old and fragile, you would not prefer being washed by a robot rather than by another human being in front of whom you might feel somewhat embarrassed. In my opinion, robotics is a field that has not yet been adequately explored. There is still a lot of potential there.

MARCH 29, 2021 #05

As a child, I naturally wished that “beaming” would finally work. I think beaming would be fantastic. And it would solve lots of problems as well. However, I always asked myself how this is organized in space so that everyone does not land on top of each other. But that is, of course, a discussion for nerds.

BERT HUBERT ENTREPRENEUR, SOFTWARE DEVELOPER AND CONSULTANT TO THE DUTCH SECRET SERVICE

August 2, 2021 #14

The most interesting thing is that we will have beaten cancer by 2050, and that we will be up to our eyeballs in renewable energies. And many things will likely be a type of linear innovation in which we know where we have to end up. But one thing I would really wish for 2050 is a ‘breakthrough innovation,’ and there is something currently not being addressed. The only thing that really is not happening in the moment is asking ourselves: How can we create a functioning society? By the year 2050 we will be able to automate nearly everything. We will no longer get sick, everyone will live to 90, we will have automated all useful activities in life, but you can share your worst opinions with the entire world around the clock on social media.

DR. KATERINA DEIKE ­ HOFMANN

SEPTEMBER 5, 2022 #39

What is happening at the crossroads of medicine and data science? How are AI algorithms making imaging procedures in medicine better and less expensive? Will there soon be small, mobile MRI devices for everyone?

JONAS ANDRULIS

AUGUST 22, 2022 #38

How intelligent will the next generation of artificial intelligence be? Will it understand the question ‘why’? Will we be threatened by an anti-human super intelligence?

FRANK WERNECKE

JULY 18, 2022 #37

When will we have flying taxis? What kind of work are transport drones doing now? How are drones changing warfare?

DR. MAR FERNANDEZ­ MÉNDEZ

JULY 4, 2022 #36

How can algae farms help to combat climate change? What can algae be used to produce? How should female scientists integrate themselves into technology development?

ROBERT BÖHME

JUNE 20, 2022 #35

When will Ariane 6 be up and running? What does a Berlin-based new space start-up have to do with it?

Do we need a backup copy of humanity on Mars?

PROF. DR. URSULA MÜLLER­WERDAN

JUNE 6, 2022 #34

Is eternal life feasible? What are the biotechnological possibilities to stop or even reverse the cell aging process? Is a life without death even something we really want?

PROF. DR. JOHANNA SPRONDEL

MAY 23, 2022 #33

How do new things come about? When is new better than old? What errors in thought make transformation sluggish?

PROF. DR. HELMUT SALIH

MAY 9, 2022 #32

What is the status of cancer research? Why might bispecific antibodies lead to a breakthrough? How do we accelerate the development of better cancer therapies as a whole?

PROF. DR. JUSTUS HAUCAP

APRIL 25, 2022 #31

How much competition is good for innovation? How innovative are the big-tech monopolies really? Are we actually living in an age of innovation?

KATHARINA KREITZ

APRIL 4, 2022 #30

Do astronauts sleep in the fetal position? What role do sensors play in aerospace engineering? Do female founders also have advantages over male founders?

DR. ­ ING. MIRO TAPHANEL

MARCH 22, 2022 #29

What is a holodeck? Can it beam us out of Zoom hell? How can a little start-up David from Karlsruhe beat the big-tech Goliaths at augmented reality?

STEFANIE ENGELHARD

MARCH 7, 2022 #28

How can inland waterway transport be electrified? When will we have an autopilot for boats? How much money does a start-up trying to take on both challenges at once need?

DR. DIANE SEIMETZ UND DR. JANO COSTARD

FEBRUARY 28, 2022 #27

What is an “innovation challenge”? What role do competition and cooperation play in it? What are the current Challenges being taken on by SPRIND all about?

RAFAEL LAGUNA DE LA VERA

JANUARY 31, 2022 #26

What did the Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation achieve in 2021? How does SPRIND want to continue developing in 2022? What structural changes must the new government initiate to make it easier for innovators to make great leaps forward?

DR. BRITTA WINTERBERG

DECEMBER 20, 2021 #25

What does cheese from a petri dish taste like? What role do microorganisms play in food innovation? Why is Germany a good location for vegan food start-ups?

PROF. DR. EICKE LATZ

DECEMBER 13, 2021 #24

What role does intuition play in big medical discoveries? How can we speed up the development of antiviral medications? And why does Boston remain a place of yearning for European biotechnologists?

PROF. DR. KARIN MÖLLING

DECEMBER 3, 2021 #23

How do viruses mutate? Do HIV and cancer patients produce an exceptionally large number of especially dangerous COVID mutations? Will one mutation follow the next now?

PROF. DR. HENDRIK DIETZ

NOVEMBER 22, 2021 #22

What is nano-origami? What can nano robots do? How are the smallest molecule structures currently changing the great big world?

DR. ANNE LAMP

NOVEMBER 8, 2021 #21

What makes bioplastic truly organic? Do female founders have a harder time accessing risk capital than male founders but an easier time generating attention? When will the cradle-to-cradle economy make its breakthrough?

DR. GEORG KORN

OCTOBER 25, 2021 #20

Is nuclear fusion finally on its way? Could it be start-ups, of all things, that bring about the breakthrough? Why do we need fusion electricity to achieve the energy transition?

DR. MAX GULDE

OCTOBER 11, 2021 #19

What can we do in space to help conserve on the use of water in agriculture? What role do satellites with heat imaging cameras play in this? Why will these satellites come from Freiburg as of next year?

PROF. DR. SASCHA FRIESIKE

SEPTEMBER 27, 2021 #18

How innovative can large organizations be? When do they have to cannibalize their core business?

Why do managers sometimes have an innovation fetish?

CHRISTIAN MIELE

SEPTEMBER 13, 2021 #17

Is the German start-up scene really innovative? Is there lots of capital available for bad ideas and too little funding for good ones? Do we need a European tech exchange?

PROF. DR. DIETER WILLBOLD

AUGUST 30, 2021 #16

What does Alzheimer’s do to the brain? Why have we not previously had any effective medications against it? Could a radically different approach finally bring about a breakthrough?

PROF. DR. REBECCA SAIVE

AUGUST 16, 2021 #15

How can the efficiency of solar cells be significantly increased? How do U.S. students learn how to found a company?

Are the working conditions for young researchers in Germany really as bad as they are often made out to be?

BERT HUBERT

AUGUST 2, 2021 #14

What can innovators learn from open source software development? Why are big companies not as good in innovation as they think? And how do secret services bring new technology into the world?

WOLFGANG SCHLEICH

JULY 19, 2021 #13

How does a quantum computer work? What can it do better than its digital colleagues? When will we have the first quantum computer ‘Made in Germany’?

PROF. DR. SILKE RICKERT­ SPERLING

JULY 5, 2021 #12

What heart defects are genetic? How has the Human Genome Project revolutionized medicine? Why do U.S. students found more biotech start-ups?

PROF. DR. BENJAMIN LIST

JUNE 21, 2021 #11

What is a perfect chemical reaction? Does an anti-authoritarian upbringing help foster disruptive innovations? Why is chemistry the most important technology there is?

DAN WATTENDORF

JUNE 7, 2021 #10

How does DARPA work? Can you force disruptive innovators to collaborate? And why is it sometimes better to walk alone?

ROLAND DAMANN

MAY 25, 2021 #09

How does microplastic enter the water? How do we get it back out? What would the world be like if everyone had access to clean water?

DR. MAI THI NGUYEN ­ KIM

MAY 10, 2021 #08

Of all things, why a chemist? How do you dance with the the results of your doctoral thesis? And what is the smallest common reality?

PROF. DR. BERND ULMANN

APRIL 26, 2021 #07

What are analog computers? Are mathematics students dumber today than they used to be? Just why should we colonize Mars anyhow?

PROF. DR. KATHARINA HÖLZLE

APRIL 12, 2021 #06

How successful is German innovation policy? How can innovation be measured? How can the government support innovation in an intelligent manner?

DR. KATRIN SUDER

MARCH 29, 2021 #05

Why is Germany struggling so much with digital transformation? What has the Digital Council of the German Federal Government accomplished? How high does the European data cloud GAIA-X fly?

BARBARA DIEHL

MARCH 22, 2021 #04

How do breakthrough innovators tick? What is “innovation education”? How can transfer from science to the economy be made more effective than it is now?

DR. INGMAR HOERR

MARCH 15, 2021 #03

How long has research already been conducted on mRNA? What is it like having Bill Gates as an investor?

What happens now with the vaccine from CureVac?

PROF. DR. GESCHE JOOST

MARCH 15, 2021 #02

How does design contribute to innovation? How do digital innovations come about? What is the real status of Europe’s technological sovereignty?

RAFAEL LAGUNA DE LA VERA

MARCH 15, 2021 #01

Just what are disruptive innovations? Can they be planned? How do we ensure that they make the world better and not worse?

The

HOME OF SPRIND IS: LEIPZIG.

THIS IS WHERE WE LAY THE GROUNDWORK TO MAKE RADICAL INNOVATION POSSIBLE.

We have created a flexible atmosphere in which we can remain agile and still meet our unique professional requirements.

The SPRIND facilities are a kind of incubator, an urban laboratory for researching, discussing and developing big ideas and concepts. The rooms and the work environment are open, creative, pleasant and contemporary.

SPRIND makes sure that groundbreaking ideas from all over Germany are transformed into reality as quickly as possible. In a pleasant, open and inspiring environment.

Strategy

Conductor Wanted Rafael Laguna De La Vera

» We do not have a knowledge problem, we have an implementation problem. « – This is a complaint I often hear in discussions with researchers, administrators and economists. What I have learned: Intelligent and dedicated people are working on big innovation and industrial policy issues, but in many cases independently of one another resulting in a kaleidoscope of unconnected and often uncoordinated initiatives here in Germany.

At SPRIND, it is our declared mission to take on even the toughest of tasks. Experience has taught us that bringing the right stakeholders together in an open discussion to address an issue, can effectuate big results very quickly. One relevant example is our semiconductor strategy. Even before the automotive industry had to introduce furlough schemes due to an interrupted supply of chips from Asia, SPRIND advocated in summer of 2020 that Europe needed to play catch up in the development and production of semiconductors. After all, supply shortages in this area can paralyze entire industries here. This dependence also makes us vulnerable to blackmail, which we are now painfully experiencing with the supply of natural gas from Russia.

We are always mindful that big technological challenges cannot only be approached at national level and must always be addressed and considered at minimum from a European perspective. We initially started on our semiconductor strategy with talks and workshops with representatives from German industry, research and politics. Only in the second step—at the request of the German federal government—did we share the interim results with other European countries as well as the European Union in order to include their perspectives and requirements. Because all participants felt their needs and concerns accurately reflected in the final draft document, it came as no surprise that the SPRIND position paper became the blueprint for the EU Chips Act introduced in February 2022. This act mobilizes EUR 43 billion in public and private investments in order to, among other things, improve performance in the design, manufacturing and packaging of ultra-modern chips throughout the entire EU. It builds the framework for state aid rules to be strategically suspended for the production of semiconductors, such as those to be manufactured at the still to be built Intel plant in Magdeburg by 2027. But that is not enough for us here at SPRIND. In the coming years, we will maintain contact with everyone involved in the construction and operation of the plant in Magdeburg in order to ensure that tax-payers’ investment really does help to build and maintain the knowledge base in Germany.

Developing And Implementing Strategies

The supportive response of all stakeholders in the development and implementation of the semiconductor strategy has affirmed us in our role to take up other issues of relevance to innovation and industrial policy as well. This includes, for example, the proposal to develop an open, interoperable software implementation of the 5G mobile standard within the scope of a European open source consortium. This would enable the EU telecommunications industry to once again play a role in equipping European network operators. If all EU companies were given access to and use of this open source software, it would give rise to a new ecosystem for radical technological innovation that would significantly improve Europe’s digital sovereignty in the field of sensitive mobile infrastructure.

SPRIND is currently developing other strategies, including those for issues such as ‘scaling of industrial production of climate protection technologies like heat pumps and energy storage’ and ‘green light for crisis-proof, renewable wind power generation.’ What all these issues have in common is that SPRIND does not only want to be an advisory think tank, but a stakeholder who actively engages in shaping the future. SPRIND has the financial resources to initiate many of these projects and get them up and running. And if our own budget is not enough to make big things happen, then our strategies will help us gain access to the German federal ministries, the European Commission and industry in order to enable things that long seemed impossible.

Strategy

Making Ip Transfer Faster And Easier Barbara Diehl

It is no secret that we produce and engage in very good basic research in Germany yet hardly ever manage to translate these findings into successful companies that generate economic benefit. An initial, very significant obstacle on this path is the transfer or licensing of intellectual property (IP) from the university or research institute to the founding team who are eager to create a spin-off. Very often things do not even get started because negotiations regarding the value and modalities of the IP transfer take many months, sometimes even years, and the universities and their technology transfer organizations (TTOs) frequently attach greater value to the short- to mid-term return of funds than to the long-term success of the spin-off. This often results in financial terms and conditions that the fledgling spin-off cannot handle, and which make the company unattractive in subsequent funding rounds by external investors.

WE WANT TO CHANGE THAT!

In late April 2022, we published a position paper on ‘IP transfer 3.0.’ The paper is the result of a discussion group of transfer experts coming together with the objective of identifying current deficits in the transfer of IP from universities and research institutes and developing a solution proposal for simplified, and at the same time, legally secure IP transfer. The method that was deemed the most promising in these talks was developed at the Technical University of Darmstadt and is known as ‘virtual shareholding in exchange for transfer of IP rights’ or just in short ‘virtual shareholding’. In the process, patents as well as other categories of IP are transferred to spin-offs in exchange for a liquidity-preserving virtual shareholding. The key advantage of this model is that there are no payment obligations for the start-up in the founding and early growth phase.

A virtual shareholding is a legal construction financially equivalent to owning a share in a company. In the case of an exit, a virtual shareholding is treated exactly like a conventional one. The key difference as compared to a ‘normal’ shareholding is that a virtual shareholding does not confer voting rights. The virtual shareholding does not have to be actively administered or developed and does not require any active portfolio management by universities or research institutes. In other words, it is a shareholding with the financial benefits of an ordinary shareholding structure, but without the obligations and responsibilities. Especially in the context of the limited personnel resources at many universities and research institutes, this simplified shareholding structure is a big plus and gives institutions a virtual stake that they would otherwise never have opted for due to the effort involved.

Coalition Of The Willing Wanted And Found

At its June meeting, the SPRIND Board granted approval of a pilot project to simplify IP transfer. More than EUR 1 million will be made available for this purpose in the coming years. The goal is to recruit 10 to 15 universities and research institutes as partners for a pilot project for validation of virtual shareholding. The project will prospectively run for a period of 36 months. It is conceived of as a real-life laboratory in which the institutions can try out and implement the model proposed in the position paper or other models for more efficient IP transfer.

The participating institutions see themselves as a learning community and as a ‘coalition of the willing,’ united by the goal and ambition to fundamentally simplify and accelerate IP transfer as well as to shape it with a view to the future success of the created spin-off. Challenging oneself as an institution and setting ambitious goals are an intentional part of the experimental experience here.

Looking Into The Future

EXPERIENCE HAS SHOWN US THAT SPRIND’S FINANCING TOOLS MUST BE MADE MORE FLEXIBLE AND VERSATILE. THIS IS WHY GERMANY’S GOVERNING PARTIES PROMISED AND STIPULATED THE FOLLOWING IN THE 2021 COALITION AGREEMENT:

» WE WILL IMMEDIATELY AND SUBSTANTIALLY IMPROVE THE LEGAL AND FINANCIAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE AGENCY FOR DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION SO IT CAN ACT AND INVEST MORE FREELY. WE WILL EVALUATE ITS PROGRESS IN THE CURRENT LEGISLATIVE PERIOD.«

A piece of legislation regarding the support and financing of disruptive innovations is currently being drafted. Its legal basis is called ‘Beleihung’, a legal status which allows funds to be granted directly to the Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation in order to fulfill a task on behalf of the German government. As part of this new legal framework, SPRIND could be granted the right and the duty to independently and systematically identify, evaluate and support projects with breakthrough potential by deploying financial resources that are usually granted as part of SPRIND’s role in the ‘innovation community.’ SPRIND could independently select projects and would be given the freedom to select the appropriate financing instruments and conditions subject to the usual budgetary and state aid rules and regulations. Supplemented by a federal budgetary self-administration endorsement, SPRIND would have extensive freedom regarding the structure of financial support for its projects.

The associated reporting obligations take into account the requirements for agile project development to ensure the economic feasibility and frugality in the application of funds. The objective of the ‘Beleihung’ is to create a legal framework that would make it possible to combine the expenditure of public funds with its commitment to the common good with the financial decision-making capabilities and agility of private sector funding instruments.