Innovation
Innovation is a strong economic and social factor. Yet transitioning from an idea to the final product and enabling its acceptance and adaptation is challenging. As the AGYA Working Group Innovation, we explore how to ensure that new technologies become accessible, affordable, and beneficial to society at large. How can a sustainable culture of innovation be established? How can we encourage Arab and German developers to exchange knowledge and experience?
Sharing innovations around the globe is key for sustainable development. Therefore, it is crucial to understand and critically reflect processes of innovation and how they are interconnected with social, political, legal, ecological, and economic issues. We identify and map best practices and aim at establishing new forms of North-South-South cooperation.
Our disciplinary backgrounds are very diverse, ranging from the technical and natural sciences to the social sciences, humanities, and arts. We conduct research projects of societal relevance as diverse as a socio-economic evaluation of key Smart City components; an ethical exploration of Social Robots; and the grass-roots level transfer of technology and knowledge in FabLabs. We also enjoy exploring new ways of communicating our research to a wider public.
The interdisciplinary and intercultural composition of the Working Group allows us to examine innovations from different angles and thus recognize cultural and regional specifics, which are then integrated into the development of innovative technical solutions for the benefit of society.
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You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
Buckminster Fuller
