A STRUCTURED PROCESS FOR TRANSFERRING ACADEMIC RESEARCH INTO INNOVATION PROJECTS – PIMES CASE STUDY
Academic research is promoting the free mind. The intention is to discover new findings in early phases of the innovation process. The researchers consider their creativity to be dependent on freedom and openness. Nevertheless, today’s research institutions are large and many of them conduct a business projects requiring a constant flow of projects and results. The challenge is to use professional innovation processes without destroying creativity and freedom. Ideas need to have a chance to result into a research project and scientists need to be protected from too much administration. Innovation processes for academic research need to be lean, simple, efficient and effective. This paper presents processes and tools for the early phase of transferring an innovative idea into a funding project. They are based on an IT platform which allows web based access from any place at any time. Results from the application in a research group are evaluated.