Be a pioneer in technology-driven markets
We’ve been living from innovative engineering achievements for more than 160 years, continuously tapping new markets and occupying new growth fields. To enhance this special strength, we’re concentrating on innovation- and technology-driven growth markets with potential for our future core business. We’re strengthening our power of innovation by leveraging synergies worldwide and increasingly utilizing external expertise. We’ve opened our lab doors to universities, research institutes and industry partners. More than 1,000 cooperative research projects a year enable us to respond quickly to the new requirements of local and global markets. We also support universities by awarding research scholarships and establishing professorships.
Our knowledge network, which comprises universities as well as suppliers and customers whom we involve at an early stage, accelerates the transfer of ideas from theory to practice. Our so-called open innovation concept also pursues this goal: dedicated research centers (technology-to-business centers) in Berkeley and Shanghai are fostering our culture of innovation and pioneering spirit by bringing in external researchers and entire research teams. And we promote knowledge transfer in the other direction through our Siemens Technology Accelerator, which helps top innovations break into the market through spin-offs and licensing. In fiscal 2011, we extended a first-time invitation to our customers and industry partners, asking them to join us at Siemens Innovation Day, where we presented current projects that showcase our innovation partnerships. Our Biograph mMR is one such project. The world’s first whole-body scanner to combine magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) in a single system, the Biograph mMR enables physicians to simultaneously display organ location, function and metabolic activity. A variety of partners and institutions around the world helped develop the system, expediting its implementation in clinical processes.
The reduction of CO2 emissions, the efficient storage and utilization of energy – our researchers and developers tackle these challenges every day. Hydrogen is one solution: it’s an optimal energy carrier and a valuable raw material. The gas can be produced from water by means of electrolysis using, for example, surplus green power. Siemens employees are now working on new electrolyzers that could provide the basis for future energy storage. The background is this: hydrogen not only has a large storage capacity; it can also be converted back into electricity – that is, the electricity produced by renewable energies and stored in hydrogen can be fed back into the power grid. Since renewable energies will form a larger part of the future energy mix, hydrogen can make a powerful contribution to their integration into future-oriented energy concepts.
These are just some of the ways in which the 27,800 researchers and developers at our roughly 160 R&D centers around the world are working every day to find answers to the challenges of our time. The figures testifying to their success are impressive. In 2010, our 12 Inventors of the Year alone generated 1,300 individual patents, while the number of invention reports per R&D employee has doubled since 2001. The result: in 2010, for the first time in our history, we were No.1 in the European Patent Office’s application statistics, with a total of 2,135 patents pending.