Covestro expands its open innovation with various partners starting from its Asia-Pacific Innovation Center in Shanghai with the new concept of “Open Innovation Hub”. The move comes as the multi-industry ecosystems in China have evolved through open innovation principles that push the boundaries of the traditional industry sectors as well as for industry upgrade.

   “China is setting the pace for technologies and solutions in many areas that address future trends, and we see tremendous potential here to engage with different innovation partners,” said Holly Lei, President of Covestro China. “With the hub concept we take a step forward in implementing our ‘in China, for the world’ innovation strategy.”

   The hub concept will support experts and partners with an infrastructure to work on five important pillars, for example in enganging with designers, start-ups and established customers to explore potential aesthetic and circular design of products. The new approach enables experts to reach out into the ecosystems to find partners for sustainability topics and circular economy, and helps to build networks for industries and applications where Chinese developments take a leading role such as mobility, robotics, hyperloops, bio-materials and drones. 

   The concept also fosters projects on digital sales and new digital services with the help of tools such as artifical intelligence, voice recognition, and augmented reality. It also contributes to expand the existing network with universities and institutes.

   “We will bundle our open innovation activities under one umbrella now,” said Dr. Michael Schmidt, Head of Innovation, Covestro, Asia Pacific. “We strive for a close and intense collaboration with our partners from all kind of industries with the goal to build a leading innovation ecosystem for our customers.”