Innovation & technology scouting - as important for us as innovation & technology development itself

 Good morning readers of my posts and followers of my blog. Time again for me to write to You. The subject of my todays post has come into my mind yesterday morning during a fone conversation with my friend Philipp Scherer, who is actively supporting us with technology scouting in Germany. 

As I have told You already in earlier posts, I have studied chemical engineering @ the German University of Karlsruhe, which today has become the KIT, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. And a couple of years ago I have been invited to join the KIT`s alumni Industry Expert Network (see also my post from July 4, 2020). 

Because of an interesting KIT technology development project, Josias Leal, our Development & Engineering Director, Marcel Moraes, our Development Manager, and I finally visited the KIT facilities in Karlsruhe exactly one year ago and made friends with the wonderful people there. 

This was when we met with Philipp for the first time. At that time he was finishing his job as Innovation Manager of the KIT and preparing for his new activities as entrepreneur (https://technologietransfer.org/). And it came pretty quickly clear for us, that we wanted to become his first clients. 

For deeper discussion of some interesting cooperation ideas we finally invited Philipp to visit us at our company in Itatiba, Sao Paulo. And upon his visit during December last year, we organized a "Open Technolgy Development Experience Exchange" event at our factory. 

As guests for our event we invited representants from the innovation department of the AHK Sao Paulo (https://www.ahkbrasilien.com.br/de/), the DWIH Brazil  (https://www.dwih-saopaulo.org/en/), the TU Munich (https://www.tum.de/en/) and our great friend Prof. Dr.-Ing. Klaus Schützer (http://www.unimep.br/scpm/pag_klaus.htm).

And - for sure - several colleagues from our DPPA department (see also my post from June 27, 2020) and some members of our Brain group (described in my post from August 6, 2020) participated together with Josias, Marcel and myself. 

The event was wonderful and we all had lots of fun and exchanged plenty of experiences related to the development, innovation and creativity subjects of our discussions. 

After a few days at our company Vulkan do Brasil (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding/vulkan-companies/brazil) we finally took Philipp to some of our key mining, steel, cement and sugar industry customers, where he could see lots of our couplings, brakes and backstops - which we had explained and shown to him earlier at our factory - "in situ" doing perfect service for our customers.

These customer visits were practically a "go & see" (see also my post from September 9, 2020) experience for Philipp and we all enjoyed it very much.

At the end of our joint activities upon Philipps first visit to Brazil, we took him to Rio de Janeiro, where we presented the engineering & sales team of our Brazilian marine division Vulkan Couplings at our office there to him.

 And finally we also visited the AHK Rio de Janeiro (https://brasilien.rio.ahk.de/pt/), where my friend Hanno Erwes, Managing Director of the AHK RJ, and his wonderful team of colaborators warmly received us. 

All these joint activities gave Philipp a very good and complete vision of what and how we are doing at our Brazilian company and he understood very well, which kind of support we were looking for in Germany.

Since then Philipp supports us with technology scouting within a service agreement, which we have signed with him after his visit to Brazil,  and - shortly before Covid-19 mixed up our original activity plans for 2020 - we had already some joint activities and meetings (both in Germany & online) regarding interesting technology developments @ German research and technology development institutions.

Actually we are currently colaborating upon concrete innovation projects with several German universities and we are also permanently exchanging ideas and experiences with similiar institutions and companies here in Brazil. 

If You were further interested in this, please feel free to participate in our presentations during next weeks spectacular annual VDI Sao Paulo event "12th Brazilian-German Engineering Day" (https://www.vdibrasil.com/eventos/12a-edicao-do-dia-da-engenharia-brasil-alemanha/). 

My colleagues Marcel and Josias will share our experiences with regards to our colaboration with German universities during the "Expert Talks" sessions and I will - together with several other Vulkan do Brasil management team colleagues - present our "Agile culture & Digital transformation" projects & experiences during the "Best Practices" session. 

But I can`t finish this post without mentionning the wonderful weekend, which I had spent together with Philipp at the "Marvellous City" Rio de Janeiro after our full week of activities and before he returned back home to Germany. 

We are all full of expectation now, that the Covid-19 crisis will hopefully come better under control next year and that we can re-take our active planning for further innovation & technology development meetings, visits and projects in Germany and in Brazil. 

As a nice fit to the just said, please enjoy this beautiful video version of Eric Clapton`s (here playing and singing together with Ed Sheeran) great song "I will be there":

https://youtu.be/217xhAEdduc

Thank You very much for Your attention. I hope, that this sharing of experiences and information was interesting for You and - like always - I highly appreciate Your feedback and comments. 

Enjoy the remaining rest of the weekend and fill up Your batteries for next week`s agenda. See You back here again upon my next post.