Andre Wahl, John Fahlteich, KETMarket GmbH, Dresden, Germany
The competition in the global market increases the need for innovation. Companies must be faster due to shorter life cycles and facing the challenge of less financial and human resources. Open innovation has the chance to solve these challenges but has risks as well. The fundamentals of open innovation will be discussed in respect to the thin film vacuum coating industry. Europe has a great ecosystem for open innovation for thin film coating with industry, a lot of institutes, universities, and public funding. All these pieces of the puzzle must be setup in the right way to generate great results from open innovation. The European Union created 28 Open Innovation Test Beds (OTIB) to showcase how it can work. Several of these OITB cover vacuum coating technologies or relevant characterisation and modelling tools. KETMarket is the Single-Entry Point of two OTIBs FlexFuction2Sustain and Convert2Green. FlexFunction2Sustain utilizes vacuum coating technology to advance the properties of novel, emerging, ecofriendly plastic and paper web materials towards sustainable products such as organic solar cells on recycled plastic substrates. Convert2Green involves vacuum coating as a tool to enable the use of circular materials innovations for smart textiles, advanced medical packaging, automotive parts and more.
KETMarket will showcase how the European Open Innovation Ecosystem can support innovative companies in advancing with their materials and coatings development and in accessing new markets in Europe and worldwide.