Norbert-Thom Innovation Award
The University of Southern Denmark visited the annual conference of “quer.kraft – der Innovationsverein e.V.” in Nuremberg. As one of seven jury members of the “Norbert-Thom-Innovationspreis”, Associate Professor Tim Schweisfurth, helped to preselect three outstanding master theses and award the most innovative one.
The nonprofit association quer.kraft supports companies in improving their innovative strength through an intensive exchange between industry and research, best practice meetings and working groups. In the centre of these events are topics related to idea and innovation management.
In this context, companies from different industries meet to unite skills and initiate new ideas. In order to promote the exchange between science and practice with each other, quer.kraft yearly awards the Norbert-Thom-Innovation-Award. It is possible to propose works of any specialization, which have been developed in cooperation with a member company of quer.kraft. The criteria for the award are the contribution of the work to the mission of the association, which means the promotion of knowledge transfer between theory and practice, as well as the innovativeness of the work and its scientific value.
Next to Associate Professor Tim Schweisfurth other Jury members were Prof. Martin Bader (University of Technology Ingolstadt), Prof. Dr. Ing. Alexander Brem (Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg), Prof. Dr. Björn Ivens (Otto-Friedrich-University Bamberg) and Dr. med. Markust Ernst (LEONI Bordnetz Systeme GmbH), Dr. Daniel Gerhard (Schaeffler Technologies AG & Co. KG), Dr. Ing. Alexander Vyhnal (STAEDTLER Mars GmbH & Co. KG).
This year's Innovation Award went to Michael Roß, who wrote his master's thesis "Faces in the Crowd - An Analysis of the Behavior of In-Company Crowdsourcing Participants Based on Psychological Theories and Phenomena" together with Schaeffler Technologies AG & Co. KG. 2nd place went to Julia Bode for her master thesis "The Importance of Games, Gamification and Serious Games. An overview of existing and potential applications in innovation management using the example of a global automotive and industrial supplier ", also in cooperation with Schaeffler Technologies AG & Co. KG. The 3rd place went to Michael Wünsch who worked for Vend Consulting GmbH on his master thesis with the title "Technology Early Detection - Methods for the Identification, Observation and Initial Assessment of Technologies in the Digital Age".
We congratulate the winners of the Norbert-Thom Innovation Award and wish them all the best for their future careers.