Germany - A Global Player of Innovation and Disruption?

Sven Schimpf recalls a workshop participant offering an uncomfortable warning sign: pay attention when established companies start joking about a new entrant or an unfamiliar solution. The joke may reveal more about the incumbent’s assumptions than about the newcomer’s potential. It is an observation worth investigating, rather than a reliable prediction, but it captures a problem that runs through his research: organisations often examine the future through the expertise that made them successful in the past.

In this March 2021 episode of Innovation Rockstars, Schimpf joins Dr. Christian Mühlroth to discuss work from the Fraunhofer Group for Innovation Research. The conversation connects a forward-looking paper on innovation towards 2030 with a field study of how companies handle potentially disruptive technologies. For R&D leaders, the practical question is how to make unfamiliar developments visible, assess them fairly and give them an appropriate route into strategic decisions.

Distinguish a future view from a view of current practice

Schimpf describes the two publications as serving different purposes. The forward-looking paper was intended to prompt organisations to reflect on their place in an evolving innovation system. The field study examined how companies were dealing with potentially disruptive technologies in practice.

For the first, the researchers analysed influencing factors and their relationships, narrowed the work to key factors and used the group’s knowledge to project developments. Schimpf makes an important qualification: they were not creating a set of alternative scenarios. They were presenting the trends they considered most likely.

That distinction affects how a team should use the findings. A proposed view of the future can challenge assumptions and guide discussion. It should still be questioned as circumstances change. A study of existing practice, meanwhile, can expose weaknesses in how companies identify and respond to opportunities.

Look beyond the familiar search area

The disruption study examined identification, evaluation and development or implementation. Schimpf’s concern at the identification stage is that companies often search the same territory for unfamiliar threats as they do for technologies supporting the existing business.

That can leave important developments outside the field of view. A team’s knowledge of its own products and sector is valuable, but it also shapes what seems relevant enough to investigate.

Schimpf connects this to group bias. People share a model of how their industry works and interpret new information through it. Stepping outside that model requires deliberate effort.

The workshop anecdote offers a useful prompt for a technology review. If an unfamiliar solution is quickly dismissed as laughable, what assumptions support that reaction? Which of those assumptions have actually been tested? The aim is to examine the dismissal, not to assume that every unconventional entrant will succeed.

Give intuition a path into evaluation

Schimpf describes evaluation practices that often rely on the intuition of employees and stakeholders. He sees value in noticing unexpected connections, but questions how far a gut feeling will carry a proposal when it reaches executive decision-makers.

The gap is between spotting something interesting and making it discussable as a strategic issue. An observation needs investigation, a view of its possible implications and an explanation of why the organisation should pay attention.

Different perspectives can help. A technology specialist may understand technical constraints, while colleagues closer to customers or other industries may see a different route to adoption. Neither perspective automatically settles the question.

The practical implication is to make room for early signals without treating them as established conclusions. Teams need a way to develop and challenge the reasoning before a major commitment is requested.

Question whether the existing team is the right team

Implementation introduces another potential bias. Schimpf asks listeners to imagine an expert with decades of experience in combustion engines being asked to assess electric drivetrains. The example is hypothetical, but the organisational question is real: how might a person’s accumulated expertise and commitments shape the assessment?

It is not an argument for discarding experienced people. It is a reason to examine whether the existing structures and perspectives are sufficient for work that could challenge the current solution.

Schimpf argues for giving potential disruption a place in strategic decision-making and translating that attention into continued operational monitoring.

“It is vital to integrate potential disruptions into strategic decision-making and maintain a constant watch.”

That ongoing attention matters because unfamiliar technologies can change significantly before their market implications become obvious. A single scouting exercise leaves the company dependent on what was visible at one moment.

Apply the same scrutiny to innovation itself

The forward-looking paper asks companies to consider changes in how innovation happens. Schimpf discusses greater transparency, collaboration, digital tools and a stronger emphasis on integrated solutions for users. These are expectations discussed in the 2021 interview, rather than a claim that every forecast has since been realised.

He also challenges the idea that innovation belongs exclusively to R&D. Employees elsewhere in a company, external partners and wider society can contribute useful observations and ideas.

“We have to empower people to realize their ideas and bring them into practice.”

That broad participation needs a route to action. Otherwise, the organisation may gather more suggestions while continuing to make decisions through the same narrow assumptions.

Asked for his Innovation Rockstar moment, Schimpf avoids claiming a single company’s success as his own. He values seeing organisations apply the group’s recommendations and move forward. It is a fitting standard for the research he describes. The work matters when it changes where a company looks, whose judgement it includes and how it prepares for developments that do not yet fit its familiar view of the market.