InnoDiZ – Self-organized innovation management in the digital age – is the name of the three-year project which is being led by the consultancy company imu augsburg and Pforzheim University. Small and medium-sized enterprises from a wide range of industries, such as blink.it , J.N. Eberle , Noch , Reichmann & Sohn , Wiedenmann and Phaesun , have come together to try out an online platform for virtual inter-company collaboration, providing support for internal innovation processes.

“The platform should help SMEs to learn methods that are useful in practice and to share their experience of them with other companies. For example, a company with just under 100 employees can develop expertise in this way and interact with other firms without having to create a mechanism for doing so itself,” explains Professor Claus Lang-Koetz from Pforzheim University. Through inter-company training of specialist staff and managers which will turn them into innovation managers and stakeholders, the aim is to establish self-organized innovation management in the participating companies.