Rapid Innovation Lab – rapidly realizing technological innovations

What We Offer:

• We accompany your innovation process holistically: generation, evaluation, and implementation of new product ideas
• We help you to rapidly develop and implement ideas
• From a pool of more than 200 creativity techniques, we select those that are suitable for you and custom-tailor them to your needs
• With systematic potential analyses we can tell you what the potential of a new technology is for your organization
• We support you systematically: with a comprehensive toolbox that includes proven methods and tools for all phases, from ideation and evaluation to support
• We offer you a lab infrastructure with various development environments for Rapid Prototyping

Our Toolbox

In our Rapid Innovation Lab, we map four phases we pass through together with you on the way towards a new solution or a new product: Innovation, Prototyping, Evaluation, and Support. With our toolbox we support your company from idea generation by means of creativity workshops via implementation with prototypes to the evaluation of customer acceptance and technical feasibility. To make your product development successful, we offer scientific competence as well as proven methods and technologies from the area of Systems Engineering. And since not all companies have an innovative technology lab at their disposal, we offer a professional lab infrastructure where we rapidly evaluate your prototypes in an adequate environment.
 

Innovation Workshops

Organizations frequently do not know how to use effective creativity techniques to generate new product ideas. The creative potential of the employees often remains untapped. Some use brainstorming – which is, however, considered one of the most ineffective techniques. But creativity does not need to be a matter of coincidence, and can be guided by using systematic methods. In our Rapid Innovation Lab, we allow your ideas to flow: We can, of course, support you with proven methods, such as Design Thinking, by performing creativity workshops and prototyping in a rather standardized manner. With our combinations of different creativity workshop and prototyping techniques, tailored individually to your requirements, we can also go even further to generate the optimal innovation process for you. To do so, we use our repertoire of more than 200 techniques not only for finding ideas: They can also provide valuable support in later phases of the product lifecycle when it comes to designing detailed product features or solving design issues.

• Bewährte Kreativitätstechniken sind zum Beispiel:
• Flip-Flop-Technik
• Lotusblüten-Technik

Potential Analyses

There may be many innovative ideas. But do these ideas also have the potential to be realized? Which technologies offer you the greatest added value for your new products? Does Big Data really help you? Where can you use mobile technologies to the greatest advantage? And isn’t it about time you got involved in the emergent world of software ecosystems?

Our potential analyses provide the right answers to exactly these questions:

• Fraunhofer Big Data Potential Analysis
• mPotential-Methode
• Fraunhofer FEA (Fraunhofer Ecosystem Assessment)

Technology Evaluation

To ensure that your rapidly developed prototypes have the appropriate quality before they are introduced to the market, we can check different aspects in our RIL:

• How well is your product accepted on the market and by your customers?
• Which User Experience does it offer?
• What are your architecture-related challenges – now and in the future?
• What about important qualities such as Security and Safety?
• We not only use these to evaluate your own product, but also intended partner products.

Lab Infrastructure

We are offering various development lab environments for rapid prototyping, e.g., for:

• Embedded Systems
• Big Data Analyses
• Mobile Applications
• Simulation

The lab infrastructure combines technological equipment with domain- and system-specific expertise. Common state-of-the-art technologies and  tools, as well as development and integration environments are integrated there, as are our own developments. With our simulation framework FERAL, existing or prototype behavior components can be executed in a simulated environment. This enables us to check the properties of a planned software architecture. For the integration of data usage control into distributed systems, we offer our security framework IND²UCE.
 

Systems Engineering and Technologies

The transition from prototype to product is often fluid. Here we support you with our scientific competence in the area of Software and Systems Engineering.

Three Typical Examples

Big Data or Internet of Things – How can you benefit from these trend topics?

When new product ideas are to be found, concrete future-oriented topics and innovative technologies such as Big Data, Internet of Things, etc. are often the focus of discussion. We contribute our research know-how to these innovation topics in order to systematically develop product ideas in collaboration with you.

Ecosystems – Is it worth your while getting involved in them?

In almost all branches of industry, the future lies in participative ecosystems. High-quality services are increasingly enabled by networking among organizations and their systems. Do you also ask yourself: Is it worth investing major effort into an ecosystem? Which one is the right one for me? With which partners can I start such an ecosystem? How will my business benefit from this? In such projects, Fraunhofer IESE acts as an incubator for new ecosystems. As a neutral entity, we get interested parties together and explore new ideas in creativity workshops. We create a balance between business models and software development and find out whether additional competent partners and technologies are needed for such an ecosystem. We as Fraunhofer IESE are a neutral partner and evaluate these aspects on the basis of our RIL methods from the Technology Evaluation component. And should you be about to implement an ecosystem, we assume that you want to know as quickly as possible what your implemented ideas feel like. Our lab infrastructure makes this possible.

System Modernization – How can you protect your legacy investments?

Many systems have grown historically. But once the effort for their maintenance or the extent of their user interfaces reaches a point where it becomes infeasible to continue as is, we check for you how the old investments can still be protected. Regardless of whether legacy systems are to be migrated to new technologies or whether existing systems or system landscapes should be simplified: With our service package 360° Diagnostics Center we identify services and components that can continue to be used. We will modernize your system, without any undesirable surprises: With our RIL components “Potential Analysis” and “Technology Evaluation”, as well as with our lab infrastructure for rapid prototyping, we will check the selected modernization technologies in terms of quality and suitability at an early point in time.

Um innovativ und schnell neue Produkte zu entwickeln, sind Experten notwendig.

Any questions?

We support exciting projects from ideation to implementation and guarantee your success.

Get in contact with us now!