Third meeting of the InNoWest Transfer Advisory Board: Focusing on Communication Results and Future Prospects

The day was opened by the Vice-President for Research and Transfer at HNEE, Prof Dr Eva-Maria Saliu. She emphasised how important it is for universities to take off their blinkers when looking at knowledge transfer and cooperation with practice and to gain external perspectives on their own activities. The appointment of transfer professorships and the different ways in which they are organised at the universities were then presented and discussed with regard to transfer activities at the three partner universities.

This was followed by an intensive exchange in small groups with the twelve advisory board members present on issues relating to the visibility, scaling and communication of results of selected InNoWest projects. The teams took away a number of suggestions from the discussion rounds on how they can communicate the results and findings from InNoWest projects in an even more targeted manner.

In the concluding plenary session, the focus then turned to the future and the question of what role the Transfer Advisory Board could play for the universities beyond 2027. A continuation of the advisory board after the end of the project would be in the interest of the universities in order to be able to count on external expertise for further cross-university transfer activities and joint applications. The advisory board members were very open to this proposal and suggested extending the cooperation to include the TH Wildau.

In the final round, many advisory board members gave positive feedback on both the specific InNoWest projects and the university network as a whole. The transfer activities of InNoWest were seen as tangible and useful for the region. At the same time, the advisory board advised the universities to focus their transfer activities even more consistently on solving specific problems and the associated added value.