Our understanding of innovation

The BMBF defines “innovation” in broad terms and its research funding focuses on technological and social innovations in equal measure. Social innovations are social practices or organizational models which aim to find viable and sustainable solutions to the challenges facing our society. They involve technology-induced innovations or they have a value all of their own. These innovations have the potential to provide answers to important current issues of our time, for example how we will live and work in the future and how we might improve the organization of social life. Social innovations can provide vital impetus and point out which new processes, organizational models, behavioural patterns or modes of work can help us as a society to tackle the major challenges we face. Climate change and demographic change are just some of these challenges.

Social innovations thus take account of the changing needs of society. In the past, this type of innovation included the manifold programmes offered by multi-generational meeting centres, microloans for small businesses, car sharing and clothing swaps. The BMBF supports social innovations in both topic-specific and open-topic research and education programmes.

The BMBF has appointed social entrepreneur Zarah Bruhn as Commissioner for Social Innovation.

The Gesellschaft der Ideen competition is funded by the BMBF to provide targeted support for social innovations – from inception and testing through to their implementation.

Our strategic foresight

Since 1990, the BMBF has carried out consecutive cycles of foresight processes to cast a look at future developments on a time horizon of 15 years. The current foresight process cycle, launched on 5 September 2019 and ending in mid-March 2023, looks ahead to the 2030s and asks what technological and societal development we might expect to see.

Interdisciplinary perspectives

INSIGHT is the second key pillar of strategic foresight at the BMBF. INSIGHT represents the continuation and further development of the innovation and technology analysis (ITA) approach and takes a look at developments in society and technology based on a five-year time horizon.

Just as with ITA, INSIGHT analyzes and assesses the opportunities and challenges of new societal and technological developments. The objective is to make results available for policy development. The renaming of innovation and technology analysis to INSIGHT firstly underscores the role that social innovations play in terms of how the BMBF defines innovation. Secondly, it emphasizes the thematic range of approaches in research, its interdisciplinary perspective and the cross-cutting issues it addresses. INSIGHT enables accounting for the varied dimensions of future developments, including social, ecological, economic as well as ethical and regulatory aspects.

Falling Walls: Helping to achieve breakthrough innovation

The BMBF provides funding for the Falling Walls Conference. At the annual Falling Walls Conference held in Berlin in November, leading researchers from throughout the world, including Nobel laureates, present their projects which led to major breakthroughs in their respective fields of research. A key aim of the conference is to promote international and interdisciplinary networking.