Technological innovations that react to complex environmental phenomena and changing regulatory demands increasingly depend on inter- and transdisciplinary cooperation. The people involved differ in their professional language, their approaches and problem definitions, but also in their goals.
At the same time, innovation cycles are getting shorter and potential frictional losses arising from these different backgrounds and ways of working are increasingly becoming significant innovation risks. For this reason, the Thuringian Water Innovation Cluster has established 6 innovation supporting frameworks along with its 18 interdisciplinary research projects to ensure the success of the cluster.
As a sociological project, “QuaWaKon” investigates the specific workflows within the cluster’s the inter- and transdisciplinary cooperation. By means of expert interviews with scientists and economic actors within and outside of the cluster, as well as through participant observation in the lab, a comprehensive overview of the natural and data scientific research and development is gained. As innovation supporting framework and sociological research project, “QuaWaKon” has a dual orientation: It reflects the cluster’s research methodically to recognize innovation impediments, but also best-practice examples, and evaluates them systematically. The project also provides valuable foundational knowledge about water-related natural and data scientific innovation processes. The project thus supports the strategy development of the cluster, and also generates knowledge that is useful beyond ThWIC in other cooperations between university and non-university research institutions and companies.
“QuaWaKon” is situated between the external perspective on the cluster’s innovative research, and the knowledge about natural and data scientific processes and workflows of a multitude of projects. In this way, knowledge and competences are generated that not only allow the identification of communication structures and barriers between different disciplines and between university research and companies, but that also assist in addressing them.
