Innovation Labs in Germany

First things first: we are sharing our knowledge about innovation labs and units in Germany with this list and open-source it. We aim to create the most comprehensive overview of innovation labs and units in Germany (other countries will follow). Your input will help innovative minds access the information sought with no effort. Here's the list👇

👉 You can access the list here

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State of Innovation Labs

Innovation labs have proven instrumental in exploring new business models and product ideas for the German corporate landscape. According to a study by Capital Magazine and Infront Consulting on digital innovation units in Germany, the share of those innovation departments closely connected to the management board of the corporate they evolved from has increased from 20% to 90% within the last 5-6 years. This development indicates that corporates in Germany have eventually realised the strategic importance of focused and value-generating innovation.

Innovation Labs more focused on bottom-line Results

Innovation has become essential in the strategy of corporates to gain competitive advantage and stay on top of the newest business opportunities. Due to external economic pressure on the bottom line of businesses, especially corporate labs are more than ever obliged to delivering returns on the budget allocated to their innovation activities. Decreasing risk of failure and increasing certainty about meeting market demand has become a firm part of their innovation frameworks. These regularly include opinion-based or qualitative market research to validate their assumptions of market demand for their venture, with a proof that costumers will actually pay for the solution often being the bottleneck of innovation. Therefore, B2C-focused and more advanced innovation labs solving this problem by validating their initial research with real-life purchase intent data from consumers via fake door tests.

Making the Innovation Ecosystem accessible

With the number of innovation labs in Germany increasing to more than 300 units (source: CAPITAL MAGAZIN x INFRONT - Konzerne auf denSpuren von Startups 2022; study link here), it's becoming challenging to keep track of the vast number of innovation labs sprouting up in Germany. That’s why we at Horizon started compiling a comprehensive list of (corporate) innovation labs. We aim to contribute to the relevance of innovation labs in the German corporate landscape by creating this accessible and free ecosystem directory for (corporate) innovators.

Help us to enhance the List for all Innovators’ Benefit

The landscape of corporate innovation is ever-changing, so we invite you to join us in this endeavour. Whether you're part of an innovation lab, know of one, or are simply intrigued by the evolving ecosystem, your insights could be crucial in developing the most comprehensive directory.

You can find the list here.