A shared vision for Thuringia.

Already today, Thuringia is an innovation leader among the 271 regions of Europe.  Our shared vision for Thuringia is to improve our position in this group even further by 2020. The Thuringian Innovation Strategy is specifically designed to enable us to achieve this objective.

The particular circumstances applicable to Thuringia will be duly factored into the Free State’s future strategic orientation. 

A particular priority in this context will be to boost private expenditures for research and development. 

Thus, the following two long-term objectives have been derived:

• Enhance competitiveness to assure economic growth;
• Increase vertical integration to achieve sustainable growth in wages, salaries, and employment levels.

Important stepping stones towards these goals have already been laid. These include the growth strategy described in the “2020 Thuringia Trendatlas” as well as the research strategy. Hewing closely to the stipulations defined by the EU, the Thuringian Innovation Strategy builds upon the aforementioned strategies, and also upon the strategic approaches formulated in additional expert studies and surveys that the Free State has commissioned.

The RIS3’s potential benefits for Thuringia:

• Focus on a limited number of cross-sectoral / cross-technology fields of specialization that are of strategic importance for Thuringia.
• Improved cross-linkage between our scientific and business communities along the various value-added chains, with the goal of generating increased compatibility. 
• More targeted use of EU subsidies so as to achieve higher efficiency in the use of increasingly scarce funds. 
• Binding commitment to the implementation of strategies and action plans on the basis of a broad understanding of “innovation.”