The Competence Center Industrial and Service Innovations analyzes and evaluates which technical and organizational innovations have the potential to successfully develop production processes in Germany and Europe and ensure them in the future. We develop future-oriented strategies with a high potential for creating added value for enterprises, associations and political actors.

Our holistic understanding of innovation includes technical and non-technical process and organizational innovations as well as product and service innovations up to new service-based business models. We analyze present and future developments of the utilization and diffusion of new solutions, assess their chances and risks, identify efficiency potentials and barriers to their adoption, develop exemplary solutions and support our customers from the design of the innovation process up to its successful implementation.

A central basis of our analyses for policy-makers and firms is our survey "Modernization of Production". We have carried out this broadly based survey of modernization trends in manufacturing industry in Germany since 1995 every two to three years. The representative random sample of more than 1600 companies in the manufacturing sector sheds light on the situation and development of important indicators in different fields of innovation. These include the application of innovative organizational and technical concepts in the production, relocation and outsourcing strategies of firms as well as new business models to supplement the product offers with innovative services. With this information the survey enables detailed analyses of the modernity of the firms in manufacturing industry according to topics, branches and regions. In addition, the central drivers and levers of the success of various innovation strategies can be determined and substantiated. Due to the great demand for international comparative data, the German survey "Modernization of Production" was internationalized and with partners from important, comparable European countries expanded to form the "European Manufacturing Survey".