Pictures of the Future    Fall 2006

Learning Together

In 2005, Siemens launched over 1,000 collaborative projects with universities and research establishments worldwide. In general, both parties profit from such relationships. Siemens employs a variety of models, from supporting students, all the way up to strategic alliances to expand its global cooperation network.

Anyone who demands the impossible must be prepared to try out new approaches. "Invent something that is visionary, highly innovative—something that will make a lot of people’s lives easier and has a big fun component, and be sure to focus on the mass market." These were the words with which a Siemens manager first approached Professor Gustav Pomberger from the Institute of Business Computing / Software Engineering at Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria. Back then, says Pomberger, everybody laughed, but he took on the challenge.

And now, after several years of work with engineers from Siemens Corporate Technology (CT), the result is there for all to see: a completely new type of navigation system based on the principle of augmented reality (see Pictures of the Future, Fall 2005,  Augumented Reality enhances navigation systems). For Siemens, such a partnership has two major benefits. The patent for the system and the prospect of a mass market. And for Pomberger, it has provided a rare opportunity to explore unconventional avenues of research in the company of a highly heterogeneous team made up of computer scientists, mathematicians, software engineers, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists and even sculptors and media artists. "This kind of transdisciplinary approach is still uncommon in the university sector, but it certainly inspired us to new creative heights!" says Pomberger.

Cooperative work with the University of Linz is just one example of well over 1,000 such research projects in which Siemens is involved each year around the world. Almost half of all such contacts originate with CT, the other half with the Siemens Groups, especially Medical Solutions. This global network provides Siemens with insight into all the latest results from the worlds of pure and applied research as well as establishing contacts to the researchers concerned, who are potential future employees. At the same time, it means the company can dovetail its own R&D activities with those of university departments working in areas in which Siemens lacks expertise—for example, in the life sciences and neurobiology.

There are several good reasons why universities are interested in working with Siemens. For researchers and engineers, the connection to industry provides an important contact to the world of business. As Pomberger explains, this not only gives them valuable information about current and future market trends, but also shows them where the problem areas in industry lie. "Cooperative work with industrial partners is an important yardstick for us. It’s the only way we can gauge whether the work we do in the lab is capable of being turned into new products or technologies," he says. Likewise, when his students come to select a research topic, its practical relevance has a high priority. "By now, our long-standing cooperation with Siemens is so well known that students often approach us with the express wish that they be allowed to work on a Siemens project," he adds.

Apart from commissioning research, another major form of cooperation between Siemens and the university sector is that of support for students who are writing dissertations and doctoral theses. At present, CT spends between 7 mill. € and 10 mill. € per year on research cooperation with universities, institutes of technology and, to a limited extent, research establishments such as the Fraunhofer Society. Of that total, which makes up between three and 4 % of the annual R&D budget of Corporate Technology, 28 % goes to fund degree and doctoral students, and around 65 % to pay for commissioned research. The rest goes to scholarship holders, consultants and visiting scientists. In addition, CT invests an additional 18 mill. € to fund cooperation in publicly funded research programs, which as a rule are financed on a 50-50 basis by industry and the public sector.

At present, research cooperation at Siemens has a distinctly German flavor. In view of this, Prof. Klaus Wucherer, a member of the Corporate Executive Committee of Siemens AG, plans to increase the number of international contacts. "We still need much more cooperation with outstanding universities around the globe," he said at a university conference in July, 2006. At the same time, he also emphasized that this did not mean that the company would be reducing its commitment in Germany.

One Hundred Years of Partnership. Siemens employs a variety of strategies to forge new alliances with higher education. In the first instance, the type of cooperation with a university in a given country depends very much on the objectives and expectations of the two prospective partners. The most common form of cooperation is that of a bilateral relationship between Siemens and individual university scientists or their associated faculties and departments. This includes purely informal contacts as well as numerous contractually settled arrangements. There is a long-standing tradition of such ad hoc, more or less firmly established, ties between Siemens and higher education, that stretches back over 100 years. Ever since its beginnings in the second half of the 19th century, electrical engineering has remained a research-intensive industry that has always had close and varied relations to universities.

An early—and still common—example of this relationship involves scientists moving from universities to spend time in industry and vice versa. Although the departure of a respected researcher marks a heavy loss for either side, it is nonetheless of great benefit in the creation of a cooperation network, because those who leave, as a rule, stay in contact with their former workplace. Another form of cooperation between industry and higher education is that of a technology transfer. In numerous cases, Siemens has supplied the technical know-how required to advance pure research projects at a university. For example, it was Siemens that supplied Prof. Klaus von Klitzing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics, with the semiconductor components he needed to measure the Quantum Hall Effect at the end of the 1970s.

Ambassador Universities. In the early 1970s, Siemens introduced a form of cooperation designed to promote even greater partnership: the Siemens Ambassador University Program. "We only work with those universities with which we want to build up a long-standing relationship," explains Prof. Hubertus von Dewitz, head of the relevant department on the Corporate Executive Committee. As a rule, the most important criterion is the scientific reputation of the university in question, especially in the technological fields that are of interest to Siemens. Today, a total of 33 universities and three institutes of technology are part of the Ambassador Program. Each is assigned its very own "ambassador" from senior company management. It is their responsibility to initiate and promote as many strategic forms of cooperation as possible. This can take a variety of forms, such as personal discussions with professors and students, the awarding of research contracts, and the funding of part-time lectureships.

Each CKI has its own administrative office that acts as an interface between the industrial and the academic worlds. It’s here that representatives from the Siemens Groups regularly meet with people from universities. This systematic transfer of knowledge is managed by a CKI adviser, whose job is to match Siemens’ needs with what’s on offer from universities and thus to initiate as many cooperation agreements as possible. In 2003, for example, 8 million euros was made available to the CKI at Munich’s Technical University to spend on suitable joint projects over the following five years. "We have already met the project’s target," says Martin Zißler, spokesperson for the President of Munich Technical University and CKI adviser there. "We’ve set up 105 cooperation agreements." By the end of 2007, the aim is that the current total of four CKIs should have increased to 12. "But that’s not the upper limit. We’d like to enter into active collaborative relationships with all the universities we rate as especially important, especially in China, India and the U.S.," says von Dewitz.

Such alliances are also about educating and supporting future generations of scientists ( Generation21). After all, higher education is an important recruiting ground for new employees. Of the 461,000 people Siemens employs full-time worldwide, 34 % have an academic qualification (26 % in engineering, natural sciences or IT). What’s more, in Germany and Austria alone, over 200 managers from Siemens hold a part-time lectureship at a university or institute of technology. To ensure that all concerned—students, universities, and Siemens—benefit as much as possible from such arrangements, someone like Dr. Michael Hofmeister from CT consults closely with the university on the precise content of each lecture program. "For universities, such lectureships represent a sensible addition to their teaching profile on the applied side, whereas they give us the opportunity to train students as potential employees by providing them with specific practical content," says Hofmeister. He adds that this form of teaching is an investment that pays off in a number of ways. It produces motivated and highly qualified future employees, promotes knowledge transfer, and increases Siemens’ visibility at universities and institutes of technology.

Yet such involvement also has its price. Hofmeister spends as much as a month of his annual working hours on lectures, workshops and scholarship programs. However, he says that compared to the rewards, it’s not really that much, and he refers to a quote by Derek Bok, former President of Harvard University: "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."
                                                                                                      Luitgard Marschall