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Digitalization and automation represent both a major challenge and a long-term opportunity for SMEs to secure their business success. They often lack specialist knowledge and a sufficient financial scope and therefore need external support in meeting these challenges. This is of particular relevance and political interest as Brandenburgs economy is determined by SMEs. Knowledge and technology transfer between scientific institutions and companies is seen as a possible solution. However, different goals, approaches and expectations of researchers and companies inhibits or complicates a successful cooperation. Therefore, transfer intermediaries are needed as mediators.The book chapter uses the example of IMI Brandenburg to show how knowledge and technology transfer can be implemented by intermediaries and what key findings were obtained in the process. Furthermore, possible success factors for both the digitization of Brandenburg's SMEs and successful knowledge and technology transfer are discussed.The chapter addresses decision-makers in SMEs as well as research institutions and transfer intermediaries and is intended to raise awareness of the opportunities, challenges and solutions in the cooperation between science and industry.
Digitalization is widely accepted as a principal technological strategy and is expected to vastly impact and transform industry, predominantly by a substantial improvement of the entire value chain. However, its implementation process remains slow, in particular for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as they tend to have misconceptions about the complexity and expense of digitalization. The purpose of this research is to analyze factors that affect Brandenburg-State, DEU SMEs in their decision making process for an effective implementation of digital technologies in their daily business routine. The results of this study are based on a survey that was conducted in cooperation with fifty SMEs, which currently face problems in the areas of enterprise resource planning (ERP), CAD/CAM, automation, logistics and production/factory planning. Ten of these SMEs have decided to invest in digitalization measures and started the implementation process. Three of them were chosen for the case study to evaluate potential benefits, trade-offs and barriers hampering the implementation of digitalization technologies. These three companies are considered representative items, since their needs and measures investigated were identical to most of the companies of this survey. It was found that the overwhelming majority of the companies regard ERP implementation as their highest priority when investing in the most cost-effective technology.