Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

Innovation Strategy for Austria”
In July 2016, Austria became the first EU member 
state to put forward a comprehensive national Open 
Innovation Strategy (OI Strategy).
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Numerous activ-
ities and interventions have already been implement-
ed since then by the ministries entrusted with imple-
mentation – the Federal Ministry for Climate Action, 
Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Tech-
nology (BMK) and the Federal Ministry of Education, 
Science and Research (BMBWF) – as well as by 
stakeholders at federal, state and local level. A num-
ber of relevant implementation examples are given 
below:
The Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environ-
ment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology 
(BMK) is focusing on innovation laboratories with dif-
ferent thematic specialisms and on test environments 
and test regions that provide a broad basis for gener-
ating knowledge with the involvement of stakehold-
ers. This goes a long way towards implementing mea-
sure 1 of the OI Strategy to set up open innovation 
and experimentation spaces. At the same time, work 
is under way to make research results from funded 
projects available on a large scale as part of the 
open4innovation platform of the Federal Ministry for 
Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Inno-
vation and Technology (BMK), thus embed Open Data 
and Open Access principles in research (measure 12). 
The Federal Ministry of Education, Science and 
Research (BMBWF) is making a key contribution to 
implementing measure 12 of the OI Strategy, not 
least with the Austrian Transition to Open Access 

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1. Current Trends
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(AT2OA) and e-infrastructure Plus projects, both of 
which relate to higher education structural funds. In 
addition, the continuous further development of the 
research infrastructure database at the Federal Min-
istry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF) is 
producing an important information platform for es-
tablishing new partnerships in all areas of science, 
academia, research, the economy and industry and is 
thus doing much to implement measure 5, creating 
and operating an innovation map. This publicly ac-
cessible database allows users to find or offer re-
search infrastructures for new cooperation projects 
and already features over 1,600 research infrastruc-
tures from Austria that are ready for a partnership. 
The annual Open Innovation stakeholder dialogue, 
which is organised jointly by the Federal Ministry of 
Education, Science and Research (BMBWF) and the 
Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, En-
ergy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology (BMK) to 
monitor implementation of the OI Strategy, was giv-
en an even more interactive setting in December 
2019, with possible applications of Open Innovation 
being explored and discussed in small groups with 
the help of relevant success stories. Unveiled there 
were the new Fair Open Innovation toolbox from the 
Austria Wirtschaftsservice (aws) as well as the Open 
Innovation Platform Salzburg together with the first 
crowdsourcing project launched on it by Salzburg Re-
search and Salzburg’s innovation centre ITG. ÖBB 
presented its group-wide innovation programme and 
the criteria required for it, while the Public Procure-
ment Promoting Innovation (PPPI) service office dis-
cussed its Open Innovation challenges with partici-
pants. Finally, the Institute for Public and Nonprofit 
Management at JKU Linz shared its academic per-
spective on Open Innovation.
The federal funding agencies are important inter-
mediaries for implementing the Open Innovation 
strategy through their programmes and funding ac-
tivities. The Austrian Research Promotion Agency 
(FFG) anchors OI in existing programme lines and 
85 See 
www.riconfigure.eu
 
promotes the implementation of the OI strategy 
through targeted measures, such as projects includ-
ing “contentXchange” or “Erdbeerwochen” as part of 
the Impact Innovation Programme. 
The Austria Wirtschaftsservice (aws) is providing 
considerable support to efforts to implement mea-
sure 9 of the OI Strategy, which concerns fair sharing 
and remuneration models for crowdworking. The on-
line guide www.fair-open-innovation.at, which is de-
signed to provide a toolbox for applying fair Open 
Innovation processes, was completed in autumn 
2019. 
As a member of the international “cOAlition S” 
consortium, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) has 
committed to publishing all research results from 
public funding in compliant Open Access journals or 
on compliant Open Access platforms. This marks a 
major step towards implementing measure 12 of the 
OI Strategy, anchoring Open Data and Open Access 
principles in research. 
By establishing the Open Innovation in Science 
(OIS) Center and continuing to develop it further, the 
Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft (LBG) has created an 
important interface for the practical implementation 
of measure 6 of the OI Strategy (building up research 
expertise for applying Open Innovation in science 
and academia).
The Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS) is inves-
tigating and supporting the reproduction of stake-
holder constellations in innovation processes as