News Overview

Breakthrough Innovation: not a luxury but a necessity

15.11.17

“If things are not failing, you are not being innovative enough”, says Elon Musk, probably the most famous innovator today. But how do you get from failure to breakthrough innovation? Is there a shortcut for that path? And how do you motivate your team to join the journey? These and many other questions were the focus of PARK INNOVAARE’s seventh edition of INNOVATION in PRACTICE, dedicated to innovation and technology management.


Innovation is on everyone’s lips. Yet no one knows the magic formula for it to happen. We at PARK INNOVAARE believe that the secret to achieving it is in an open exchange of know-how and experience between peers, industry, and academia, and simply creative people. This is why, for the seventh time, we invited all those involved in innovation processes to join the discussion at INNOVATION in PRACTICE. Keynote speaker Andreas Rülke, an experienced innovation and technology consultant, shared his know-how in the field.

An electric vehicle’s sustainability depends on other technology

Focusing on breakthrough innovation, workshop participants – this time mainly from the energy and mobility sector – not only learned some basics of innovation and technology management but also discovered, taking the example of a car, how it could improve the product’s life cycle. As presented by Christian Bauer, a researcher from the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) results have shown what environmental impact a vehicle has on all stages of its life, from cradle to grave. The research makes it clear that the electric vehicle itself is not sufficiently eco-friendly due to the need for battery production and disposal and energy sources. The long-term solutions for improving the vehicle’s impact on the environment will be in the development of clean energy production and supply chain and recycling strategies for batteries and fuel cells.

TESLA’s vision of electromobility

These conclusions make it obvious that breakthrough innovation is not something that “would be nice to have”, but a necessity: it can influence not only one product but several industries at the same time. It is this “must have” approach that motivates companies like TESLA to engage in new innovative ventures, as Bastian Petersen, TESLA Advisor, explained to the group. “The car is only one product we are working on”, Petersen said. The company also strives to provide a complete energy storage solutions for houses, such as Tesla Powerwall or innovative solar roof tiles, and more.

Practical exchange in the foreground

Breackoutsessions

Having set the tone of the discussion, the participants went into breakout sessions. Thanks to the highly interactive world-café format of the sessions, all the participants managed to exchange their ideas with others: from necessary resources and incentives that motivate employees to generate innovative ideas and individual creativity methods, to their experience with working on breakthrough innovation. A fruitful evening in the company of innovative, creative people – and another successful INNOVATION in PRACTICE.