About us

Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum

SEZ (Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum) is an independent economic entity within the Steinbeis-Foundation. It was founded in March 1990 as the operational unit of the Commissioner for Europe of Baden-Württemberg's Minister of Economic Affairs. SEZ's core activity is to promote RTD programmes and to support cross-border technology transfer.

Since 1995 SEZ has been one of now eight existing Innovation Relay Centres in Germany and since April 2000 it has headed the consortium Innovation Relay Centre D/CH.
SEZ's tasks include:

• assisting industrial companies in participating in European R&TD,
• offering assistance in the exploitation of the research results, (including dissemination of best-practice)
• promoting cross-border technology transfer,
• stimulating and supporting the innovation process in industrial companies,
• supporting industrial companies in managing cross-border projects.

SEZ operated as a successful Value-Relay-Centre from 1993 - 1995. According to the Commissions' evaluation it was in the group of the 10 best Value-Relay-Centres in Europe. It was therefore chosen again by the Commission in 1995 and was given the status of Innovation Relay Centre (IRC).
As an example of SEZ's work, it was awarded a Euromanagement II contract by DG XXII under which it carried out R&TD audits of twenty promising SMEs in the region. This activity has provided SEZ with vast experience in the analysis of the long term strategy of companies, their technological needs, the opportunity to identify the best strategy, including whether they should participate in a national or a European research project, or to co-operate with partners for the exploitation of research results or to transfer existing technologies.
SEZ is now involved as a partner in approximately 30 European projects, and has extensive experience in organising workshops, conferences and brokerage events for technology transfer as well as finding partners for RTD-proposals. One of these projects includes the implementation of a new cross-regional venture - Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum Karlsruhe which was opened on 2. January 2000.
The SEZ Team is made up of 16 well-qualified members from five different countries, who are all devoted to the varied tasks of the IRC.