Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung With the courage to innovate:
With the courage to innovate:
#innovationland Deutschland
Innovation - what does that actually mean? For Germany, for the world, for each and every one of us? How can we promote our country's capacity for innovation? - These are questions that we have analysed intensively for the #innovationsland Deutschland campaign. On behalf of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), we developed the strategy and design concept for the digital campaign together with the lead agency familie redlich and are jointly responsible for the design of the comprehensive campaign programme.
We are shaping the future. Each for themselves and all together.
From climate change and resource scarcity to demographic change and increasing social divergence: Germany and Europe are facing huge challenges. At the same time, the digital transformation is catapulting us out of the age of industrialisation and into a new era of networking and digitality. It has long since ceased to be enough to safeguard what we have already achieved. Fundamental changes are needed to successfully shape the future.
It is people who characterise #innovationland Germany - and who inspire: Because we can all make a difference.
The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic has shown us all that we are capable of finding new, pragmatic solutions in a very short space of time. The #innovationsland Deutschland campaign picks up on this spirit of agility: The aim is to make citizens aware of their own self-efficacy and motivate them to experiment. After all, innovation starts with people. New ideas require courage, openness and drive, as well as dialogue. And success comes when we network and learn from each other.
What makes people innovators
Reacting spontaneously in a crisis, acting on instinct or leaving everything behind and starting afresh: For the campaign, we looked for inspiring protagonists to tell their individual innovation stories. It's about people who want to make a difference and put their ideas into practice. On a small and large scale. We wanted to show that innovation has many faces and can emerge anywhere.
The focus of the individual stories is not on concrete success, but on the personal motivation, character traits and attitudes of the innovators: What drives them? How do they deal with setbacks? What does it mean to fail and keep going? It was primarily the supposedly soft factors that interested us when designing the stories.
"Ideas drive us forward. If you have an idea, it's important that you spend enough time on it - maybe it's one that has potential."
Diverse perspectives
The campaign is designed to be open, flexible and inclusive. For the campaign portal innovationsland-deutschland.de, we have designed a magazine section in which very different stakeholders can submit and tell their personal stories. The core idea is to present diverse perspectives and convey a broad understanding of innovation.
Innovation needs communication
Innovation begins with an idea, but is also a process of enquiry and networking. This is why #innovationsland Deutschland brings together people from different areas of society and stimulates dialogue. The communicative highlight of the campaign was the two-day event "Inspiration: The Future Arena". The basic idea is to create friction, knowledge transfer and collaboration through dialogue across different disciplines and age groups.
"Both in art and everywhere else, we need to connect people and create discourse in order to enable innovation."
Shaping the #innovationland
In the Zukunftsarena, high-calibre guests from science, business, culture and the media as well as political representatives addressed the question of how we can make #innovationsland fit for the future together. Viewers were able to join in via livestream and participate in interactive discussions in various formats.
The BMBF main stage was complemented by a diverse programme from partners such as the Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Ideenexpo and Dark Horse GmbH. Workshops, panel discussions and innovation duels discussed, for example, what entrepreneurs can learn from art and culture, what young founders expect from the older generation and what attitude we need to develop towards new technologies if we want to compete internationally.
"Germany and the entire Western world in general should be more open to innovations from other parts of the world."
Multi-stakeholder management with the involvement of Research Minister Anja Karliczek
The main tasks in developing the campaign were to coordinate the various communication channels as part of the overall strategy and to build a sustainable network. Collaboration with the Federal Ministry requires well-structured coordination processes and intensive stakeholder management with various contacts within and around the ministry.
