“We file at least two patents per day—one in the morning, one in the afternoon,” says Georg Rosenfeld, director of research at the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft (Fraunhofer Society), Europe’s largest organization for applied research. “Most are generated within our own research activities. But everything we do is geared toward the needs of industry.”
The Fraunhofer Gesellschaft was founded in 1949 in postwar Germany. Today in that country it boasts 67 institutes in all major branches of engineering, a budget of €2.1 billion ($2.6 billion), and some 23 000 employees. Sites outside Germany are smaller and are called centers; there are seven in the US—with a total of about 180 researchers—and eight scattered across Europe and elsewhere. Fraunhofer representatives in Asia, the Middle East, and South America look for industrial opportunities and research partners. In total, the society has around 10 000 joint projects with industry each year. It’s no surprise that...
