Within the framework of KTUR, the "KTUR Startup & Innovation Nights" will take place for the first time. On two consecutive evenings, universities, startups, companies and intermediaries of the Upper Rhine region will have the opportunity to get to know each other and to exchange experiences and ideas on how the innovation network in the Upper Rhine region can grow and gain more supraregional attention.

With "Innopreneur" the Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University (DHBW) Lörrach is dedicated to the successful innovation culture in companies. As part of the KTUR pilot measures "Starting a Business" DHBW Lörrach is further developing this talent promotion and networking offer to include a cross-border, trinational component and is opening up to companies on both sides of the Rhine. At the kick-off event of the KTUR measure “Starting a Business” on April 21/22, 2021, DHBW Lörrach will contribute its expertise on this topic with a workshop led by Dr.-Ing. Hans-Jürgen Lesser.

Professor Dr Harald F.O. von Korflesch heads the Zentral Institute for Scientific Entrepreneurship & International Transfer (ZIFET ) at the University of Koblenz-Landau. In international projects and research, ZIFET deals with various aspects of international entrepreneurship and the opportunities that the concept offers. We spoke with the professor of information management, innovation, entrepreneurship and organizational design about how international entrepreneurship can fuel innovation and start-up culture in the Upper Rhine region.

We talked with three experts for international projects of the University of Applied Sciences of Kaiserslautern about their experiences with cross-border projects. How can such projects advance regions? What is special about working together in an international team? What are the challenges and how do you personally benefit? Answers to these questions were provided by Dr. Kathrin Jörg, Samuel Hoefman and Dr. Jessica Weyer.

The first meeting of the “Knowledge Transfer Upper Rhine Circle” will take place in December 2020. This measure is part of a work package aimed at structuring the cooperation between the numerous transfer offices in the Upper Rhine region. The aim of the mainly face-to-face meetings will be to get to know the stakeholders from Germany, France and Switzerland better and to exchange ideas and experiences in the context of lectures and discussion rounds on various topics from the field of knowledge and technology transfer, also with regard to cross-border particularities. We spoke with Prof. Dr. Jörg Thietke, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Vice Rector for Research, Innovation and Transfer at the Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University (DHBW) Lörrach, about his expectations and wishes regarding this exchange format.

We wanted to find out which challenges for cross-border cooperation currently exist and what opportunities the project partners see in an increased trinational collaboration within the field of knowledge and technology transfer. For this purpose, we conducted an interview with Dagmar Vössing, head of technology transfer at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Alessandro Mazzetti, manager of innovation alliances at the University of Basel, and Antoine Parmentier, manager of external relations at SATT Conectus. The latter organization is responsible for transferring technologies and for managing collaborative research contracts of universities and research institutes in the Alsace area.