An interview with Professor Dr. Oliver Skroch, Steinbeis Entrepreneur at the Steinbeis Transfer Center Innovation Lab Business Informatics
In the experience of Oliver Skroch, a professor at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences and Steinbeis Entrepreneur at the Steinbeis Transfer Center Innovation Lab Business Informatics, young business informatics professionals are highly sought-after, provided that, to put it simply, they can offer the best of both worlds: expertise in data-driven informatics and a knowledge of business administration. He gave TRANSFER an insight into the current challenges.
Professor Skroch, what was your aim when you established your Steinbeis Transfer Center Innovation Lab Business Informatics in May 2023?
That’s a good question. There were two main factors. Firstly, I run Bachelor’s and Master’s courses for computer science, mathematics and data science at my university h_da, where I teach my students constructive business informatics that they can apply in practice. I want to offer high-achieving, motivated students invaluable opportunities to work on innovative, exciting challenges as early as possible, in a real, hands-on environment. The Steinbeis Transfer Center allows me to do this.
Secondly, thanks to my extensive professional experience, I have a good understanding of competition in our strong, open economy. And one constant is that, especially in the field of
constructive business informatics, the pressure to innovate has always been particularly high, and highly-skilled professionals have always been extremely sought-after. Many businesses and organizations are seeking an edge to strengthen their own competitiveness by improving their innovation and development efforts. Collaborating with universities on R&D with a practical focus is one way of doing this. I can and want to help these businesses and organizations, and have been doing so since last year through my Transfer Center.
What specific services do you offer your customers and how can SMEs in particular benefit from them?
I’m glad you mentioned SMEs. They’re the cornerstone of our economy, and their successes show how businesses can stay competitive. To do so, they must keep finding value-adding entrepreneurial goals and pursue them relentlessly. The outside world tends to overlook the fact that this doesn’t just happen by itself and is usually far from easy.
And it can give rise to topical, innovation-related questions in the field of constructive business informatics.
The Innovation Lab Business Informatics, or ILBI for short, can help them along the way and work with them to tackle the challenges in their own particular practical context. We can assist them with high-achieving, motivated students, state-of-the-art content and professorial support and guidance. In addition, by working on real challenges, the SMEs and students soon get to know each other well and can form a sound mutual judgment about whether the collaboration is worthwhile.
As a Steinbeis Transfer Center, the ILBI provides the necessary ecosystem. Its doors are always open – to any of our students who want to gain practical, extracurricular R&D experience, and to businesses and organizations with ambitions in the field of constructive business informatics. We help all of them to find the path to success.
In your work, you use an approach that combines the technological and commercial perspectives. Can you tell us a bit more about it and the benefits it delivers for your customers?
Roughly speaking, it’s about combining the competitive advantages offered by technically meticulous engineering and commercially driven optimization. I am well acquainted with both perspectives. There are clear and lasting competitive advantages if you manage to guide a company, an organization or a project towards this kind of “interdisciplinary” perspective, especially if it then trickles down into the company’s DNA.
Unfortunately, this can often go wrong in practice, as we know from a few notorious anecdotes. I’m afraid there isn’t a surefire textbook formula for getting the different perspectives to fuel each other through mutual understanding… Even at the ILBI, we don’t have a silver bullet. But we can help to find individual, situational solutions for each particular context.
Contact
Prof. Dr. Oliver Skroch (interviewee)
Steinbeis Entrepreneur
Steinbeis Transfer Center Innovation Lab Business Informatics (Darmstadt)