Bosch Wants ‘Millions of Ideas’

RENNINGEN, Germany – Ideas are cheap and plentiful, but bringing them to life requires time, patience, commitment and, often, lots and lots of capital.

Offset design distinguishes main building at new campus.

Germany’s largest auto supplier Robert Bosch is attempting to feed that spirit of innovation by opening its new €310 million ($354 million) research and advanced-engineering center here near its Stuttgart headquarters to serve as an incubator for innovations that reach well beyond the auto industry to incorporate Bosch’s numerous other product sectors, including tools, household appliances and agricultural equipment.

The company envisions the 14-building campus to function like a university, specifically Stanford in Silicon Valley, with 1,200 employees working alongside 500 Ph.D. students and interns representing 250 universities and research institutes worldwide.

“We want our researchers to do more than just think about what the future could bring,” Bosch Chairman Volkmar Denner says at the dedication. “We want them to be successful entrepreneurs as well. Renningen is Bosch’s own Stanford.”

With a motto of “Connected for millions of ideas,” Bosch wants the facility to uplift German innovation and encourage young people to push forward in developing ideas, even if it leads to failure. In this regard, Denner says he sees Germany at a competitive disadvantage.

Bosch Chairman Volkmar Denner.

“In Germany, there are neither the opportunities nor the willingness to establish companies,” he says. “Especially among its young university graduates, we need more start-up spirit. Universities have to do more than prepare their students for exams in highly specialized fields.”

A lack of venture capital is not the only barrier holding back German innovation, Denner says, citing research finding only 25% of Germans can imagine setting up a company “while the figure for the U.S. is 40%.”

Fear of failure is the reason cited by 80% of Germans, he says, “while in the U.S. this figure is only 30%.”

Bosch purchased the 100-ha (247-acre) military site here in 2010 and the following year began demolishing buildings and cleaning it up. Construction on the tech center here started in 2012 and was completed in the spring.

Renningen Home to Anti-Skid Research

Even before the new facilities were conceived, Bosch had a connection with this property. Twenty years ago, Bosch engineers used the adjoining airfield to evaluate the emerging technology of electronic stability control, designed to prevent a vehicle from skidding out of control by applying brakes to specific wheels.

“Renningen was the site of the first trials for a system that would be such a blessing that it is now standard equipment in vehicles in many parts of the world,” Denner says.

Bosch is one of the world’s largest suppliers of ESC, which has been standard in the U.S. since 2012. The University of Cologne estimates the technology has prevented nearly 260,000 traffic accidents and saved some 8,500 lives in Europe alone.

Bosch start-up Deepfield Robotics developed Bonirob agricultural robot to automate crop management and weeding.

The company has created Bosch Start-Up as a wholly owned subsidiary to provide facilities, financing and other administrative tasks for young entrepreneurs needing a hand.

For instance, the Bosch start-up Deepfield Robotics developed the Bonirob agricultural robot, which is the size of a compact car and a tool for plant breeding and crop farming.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel attended the dedication at Bosch, praising the company for cultivating technological pioneers.

“Research already means investing lots of time and money, never quite knowing whether in the end it will add up to something and pay off. So one must have the courage to take risks,” Merkel says in her speech. “There is a certain lack of entrepreneurial spirit.”

She points to the U.S. and Asia as centers for innovation, putting pressure on Germany to keep up.

Michael Bolle, Bosch’s president-corporate sector research and advance engineering.

“The world is not asleep, and they are not waiting for us to wake up,” Merkel says. “So we have to be more open-minded, and we have to adopt an integrated approach as they do here with this research campus.”

Employees at the new tech center are consolidated from three other locations around Stuttgart, some of them separated by as much as 19 miles (30 km).

“Communication and collaboration were difficult,” says Michael Bolle, Bosch’s president-corporate sector research and advance engineering.

“Some of our associates were experts in their specific areas, but they did not exchange their views (with each other) sufficiently,” he tells journalists.

“We are firmly convinced in the future innovation and creativity will be generated exactly at the interfaces – that is, the collaboration between the various disciplines. This has been one of our key principles.”

The buildings incorporate 270 research labs but also are designed to foster interaction and exchange of ideas, with lots of spaces for impromptu meetings, relaxation and casual conversation.

Some of the buildings are not fully occupied yet, and next year a Bosch division will take up space in some of the available offices. There’s also extra ground in the event more construction becomes necessary.

“We intend to use it for further expansion of the campus together with the divisions when time is right for that,” Bolle says.

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