A Network of Expertise
Research and development (R&D) are prerequisites for innovation and securing the future of a company. This has been true for Siemens ever since the company was established in 1847. Today roughly 30,000 researchers and developers worldwide are working on innovations that can be used to safeguard existing business and open up new markets. Siemens spent more than €3.8 billion – that’s 5.1 percent of sales – to this end in fiscal 2010.
The goal of Corporate Technology (CT) and its worldwide network of experts is to act as a powerful innovation partner for Siemens’ business units. The organization provides expertise regarding strategically important areas to ensure the company’s technological future, and to acquire patent rights that safeguard its business operations. Against the background of megatrends such as climate change, urbanization, globalization, and demographic change, CT focuses on innovations that have the potential to change the rules of the game over the long term in areas that interest Siemens. As Head of Corporate Technology and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Siemens, Managing Board member Klaus Helmrich is responsible for ensuring that the company is prepared for the future.
For an integrated technology company such as Siemens, it is vital to develop technological synergies beyond its individual operational units – within the Siemens sectors and between them, as well as between the sectors and Corporate Technology. One of the responsibilities of the CTO is to make sure that these possibilities are fully exploited. Another responsibility is to analyze the company’s technological foundations and generate powerful momentum for improvement. In addition, the CTO is charged with increasing the efficiency of research and development activities and creating open innovation networks all over the world – both inside and outside the company.
A major role in Siemens’ innovation activities is played by Corporate Research and Technologies (CT T). The 1,750 men and women who work within CT T’s global research network focus primarily on key technologies and cross-sector technologies that have strategic significance for more than one business unit. For example, researchers are working on pioneering technologies in areas such as materials development, microsystems, software, security, production processes, energy and sensor technology, imaging processes, and information and communication technology.
Technology Fields and Lighthouses
In its Global Technology Fields (GTFs), CT T brings together experts from globally operating research teams all over the world in order to pool their expertise and become a preferred innovation partner for the Siemens sectors. Together with the business units, CT T is working on the development of new solutions in numerous application-oriented projects. In addition, ten lighthouse projects are investigating in which fields of research the innovative power of Siemens should be focused in particular over the long term. Current topics range from smart grids to electric mobility to energy storage, and from the use of CO2 to the automatic generation of knowledge from self-learning systems. These projects involve researchers from various CT clusters and Siemens sectors, who work together in interdisciplinary teams.
A large proportion of the budget of Corporate Research and Technologies is covered through project agreements with the business units, which are its customers. CT T also receives corporate funding for the long-term development of new technologies and the establishment of new areas of expertise. All in all, CT T is responsible for approximately 7.2 percent of Siemens’ total expenditure on research and development. This figure is made up of contract research for the sectors (about 57 percent), corporate financing (33 percent), and external funding (10 percent).
Cooperation with Top Universities
Particularly important factors for CT T are its close connections with its customers and top universities. These enable CT T to offer faster and more target-oriented solutions that are ideally adapted to local requirements, and also to be perceived as an appealing employer for the brightest candidates. That’s why CT T has supplemented its locations in the U.S. and Europe in recent years by opening research centers close to its business operations – for example, in Beijing, Moscow, Bangalore, and Singapore – and has expanded its cooperation with top universities. CT T research teams are now located in the world’s most important technology strongholds: Princeton, New Jersey; Munich, Erlangen, and Berlin, Germany; Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia; Beijing and Shanghai, China; Bangalore, India; Singapore; and Tokyo, Japan.
In all of these places, CT T researchers are supporting Siemens business units with their product development, maintaining contacts with universities, analyzing global trends, and observing developments in their local markets. In addition, “incubators” such as the Siemens Technology Accelerator in Munich and the Siemens Technology-to-Business Centers in Berkeley, California, and Shanghai discover new business ideas and guide them to market success in cooperation with partners inside and outside Siemens.
In addition, around 3,160 software developers at the Corporate Development Center (CT DC) work at locations in Europe, India, and China. As an internal solutions provider, CT DC develops software for new products and services in close collaboration with the Siemens sectors. CT DC tests and installs software as part of customer projects, adapting it to different requirements. Subsequent maintenance and expansion activities also form part of its job.
Intellectual Property
Safeguarding Siemens’ innovations and intellectual property from competitors is the job of Corporate Intellectual Property and Functions (CT IP). The approximately 500 experts who work at CT IP’s 19 locations around the world support the company’s development of strategies for registering, safeguarding, and using property rights. CT IP represents Siemens on committees for the establishment of international norms and standards, and provides the sectors and the regional units with technical and market-related information. CT IP is also responsible for the global management of all Siemens patents – approximately 58,000 patents in all. That makes Siemens one of the most innovative companies in the world. In business year 2010 alone, Siemens employees registered some 8,800 inventions and applied for around 4,300 patents – that’s 40 inventions and 20 patent applications per working day. The top positions occupied by Siemens in the international statistics reflect the company’s innovative strength.
The complexity of the technologies involved, the broad range of applications they cover, and Siemens’ global operations increasingly require international cooperation in R&D – in other words, open innovation. Siemens enters into more than 1,000 partnerships with universities, research institutes, and industrial partners every year. About half of these partnerships involve Corporate Technology – and these collaborations are an indispensable means of developing strategically important technologies. By sharing ideas with scientists from outside the company, Siemens researchers keep abreast of the latest findings resulting from fundamental and applied research all over the world.
Meanwhile, universities also reap huge benefits from their partnerships with Siemens. Rather than conducting research in a purely theoretical, application-free vacuum, they remain close to the issues that are important to industry. In addition, for many young scientists, cooperation of this sort is so exciting that they eventually decide to work for Siemens.