EVA DIEDRICHS

Dr. Eva Diedrichs is senior consultant at A.T. Kearney, Top Management Consulting. She is Core Team member of the European Innovation and R&D Management Practice there. She is the responsible project manager for the European Commission’s flagship project on innovation management called “IMP³rove”. She has managed numerous innovation management projects in various industries such as pharmaceutical industry, medical device sector, service industries and in the aero space and defense sector. She published several articles and monographs on innovation management, benchmarking, change management and strategic topics. She co-authored a book on core competencies and gave several speeches on success factors of innovation management at international conferences. She holds a PhD from the University of Bamberg, Germany and was a lecturer at St. Thomas College, St. Paul MN, USA.

Multi-tasking – The Challenge of Intermediaries in SME Support for Innovation

In view of creating more competitive regions and industry sectors, innovation capabilities of SMEs play a central role. SMEs are strong economic drivers in many countries, and their ability to innovate will determine the health of national and regional economies in the future. A key support for SMEs in their innovation efforts are public innovation support programmes.

Highly Innovative Low-Tech Companies?

When you think about low-tech industries, you will probably think about many aspects, except for innovation. Innovation is mostly associated with innovative products and technology, but hardly ever with anything beyond R&D activities. This “myth” can now be refuted through the results of a currently published study “Gaining Competitiveness with Innovations beyond Technology and Products: Insights from IMP3rove”.