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.

Avec "Innopreneur", l'université coopérative du Bade-Wurtemberg (DHBW) de Lörrach se con-sacre à la culture de l'innovation dans les entreprises. Dans le cadre des mesures pilotes KTUR "Créer une Entreprise", la DHBW Lörrach développe cette offre de promotion et de mise en ré-seau des talents pour y incluyer une composante transfrontalière et trinationale. Lors de la mani-festation de lancement de la mesure KTUR " Créer une Entreprise " les 21 et 22 avril 2021, la DHBW Lörrach apportera son expertise sur ce thème avec un atelier dirigé par le Dr.-Ing. Hans-Jürgen Lesser.

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.

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.