IBH-Lab KMUdigital - Management

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The IBH-Lab KMUdigital is a research and innovation network of universities and practical partners from business, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The Lab supports SMEs in the Lake Constance region in coping with, implementing and implementing rapidly advancing industrial digitalisation. Eight universities from Germany, Austria and Switzerland develop interdisciplinary application-oriented solutions in six individual projects, always taking into account the following questions: How much digitalisation does it have to be in small and medium-sized businesses to remain competitive? How much digitalisation is suitable for small and medium-sized enterprises, taking into account financial and human resources? Together with SMEs, we make a sustainable contribution to the promotion of knowledge, innovation and technology transfer as well as to the location attractiveness of the Lake Constance region. Our overarching goal is to secure the international Lake Constance region as one of Europe’s most competitive and dynamic economic areas, even in the digital transition. Digitalisation leads to radical upheavals of business models and process chains, which can be existential threatening especially for SMEs and often have a massive impact today. Due to their limited resources and high specialisation, SMEs have little opportunity to fully capture and embrace this change. In the IBH-Lab KMUdigital, problems are analysed and adequate digitalisation strategies are developed for SMEs. For this purpose, an interdisciplinary approach is sought. Technical considerations are necessary, but not sufficient. Rather, it is about the technology-based design, implementation and optimisation of organizational structures, processes and components on the one hand, as well as cross-company business processes together with customers, suppliers and partners. The IBH-Lab KMUdigital bundles the existing expertise around Lake Constance in order to analyse the opportunities and impacts for the region’s medium-sized enterprises holistically. In six individual projects, answers to the following questions are developed: How can SMEs optimise their core business while implementing innovations? How can digitization take place along the nutritional value chain? How can the political, legal and infrastructural framework for SMEs be improved? How can SMEs generate data and create value from it? How can SMEs adapt their production to current and future requirements? How can SMEs develop their digitization strategy themselves? The funded individual projects are based on the four strategic areas 1) production 2) servitization and business processes 3) framework conditions and 4) education and training.

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