Analyzing the Future of the German Automotive Industry at TU Hamburg

What could the future look like for the German automotive industry by 2030?
40 students from the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) addressed this question and developed possible future scenarios using the ITONICS innovation tools.

As part of the ITONICS Campus program, the students of international Master Programs at the Institute of Innovation Marketing (IM) were introduced to scenario analysis by Dr. Tobias Meyer, Innovation Consultant at ITONICS, in a problem-based learning session. Within 4.5 hours, they identified relevant driving forces and formulated possible scenarios for the automotive industry in Germany in 2030.

First, the students learned

• what a scenario is, why scenarios are relevant and how to generate them.
• how a software-based approach can support scenario analyses.
• to use the ITONICS Foresight modules to identify, classify, evaluate and prioritize driving forces and uncertainties in a company or industry environment.
• how to combine driving forces with scenarios by estimating the impact and likelihood of occurrence in order to identify favorable and risky scenarios.
• what it takes to analyze the impact of each scenario on business activities.

After receiving information on the current economic, technological, political, environmental, and social situation, the students selected driving forces from the ITONICS Trend Database relevant to the case. Divided in groups of four, they built individual foresight radars for the automotive industry. The driving forces were then prioritized based on the impact rating. Subsequently, the results were presented and discussed in the plenum.

Concluding the session, the students used the software to identify dependencies between the factors by correlating elements based on a logic of “drives”, “driven by”, “hinders” and “hindered by”. For the most relevant driving forces, each group then built projections for the year 2030 using the ITONICS Scenario Portfolio and formulated four future scenarios, which were finally presented again and discussed within the class.