• Description of the Region
• Cluster Profile
• Global Players
• Cluster Policy
• Contact Details

Karlsruhe, with its population of 285,000 and set on the plains of the Rhine river between the Black Forest, the Vosges and the Palatinate hills, is a city justifiably described as a "stronghold of creative thought with added savoir vivre". Founded in 1715 as the capital of Baden the city always kept the focus on culture, arts and science. The Centre of Arts and Media, the Badisches Staatstheater, plenty of private stages, the academy of arts, the music high school and the immense number of institutions representing the entire range of arts and culture form the unique climate where innovation is possible. No wonder the European Union honoured the Karlsruhe Region in December 2004 for the third time with the "European Award of Excellence for Innovative Regions" recognising its success in transferring knowledge into new products and services.

Karlsruhe boasts a research landscape unique in Europe. The local research institutions have a staff of 10 000 - a nearly inexhaustible knowledge pool. Karlsruhe owes its top position in science to the sound foundation provided by its institutes of higher learning, one of them being Germany's oldest technical university with the Centre for Functional Nanostructures (CFN). At the Karlsruhe Research Centre (FZK) of the Helmholtz Association nine institutes cooperate on nanotechnology programmes. Besides this new focus the University and the Fachhochschule are very strong in the fields of engineering and informatics. The region's major industries are the information and communication technologies, the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, the automotive industry and electrical and mechanical engineering.

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• The automotive cluster AEN (Automotive Engineering Network) unites enterprises from the southwest of Germany, which are active as suppliers, outfitter or system partners of the automobile industry.
• The CyberForum is Karlsruhe's IT cluster with about 600 members. Its focus is on giving advice and assistance to start-ups and to companies trying to consolidate their position in the "TIMES" (Telecommunications, Information Technology, Media, Entertainment, Security) industrial sector. The Forum has established an advice centre with a network of advisors and regular advice surgeries.
  To exchange and network ideas and experience, important decision makers and opinion formers from the Karlsruhe Technology Region meet once a month at CyberForum's "info market"; they come from the IT and media sector, from new and established enterprises, local government, universities, other institutions of higher learning and research centres or they are private sponsors.
• The NanoMat network comprises three research centres of the Hermann von Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Deutscher Forschungszentren, ten universities with natural and engineering science departments, one Max Planck Institute, an Institute of the Wissenschaftsgemeinschaft Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, three Fraunhofer Institutes, an Institute of the Polish Academy of Science, the DECHEMA and four major companies. A Close cooperation in various research programmes within the NanoMat network enables the abilities of the partners to be interlinked so that projects can be carried out in continuous and interdisciplinary way from the preliminary research stage through to the transfer to economically viable products.
• MobileRegionKarlsruhe.de is a market place for the various mobile solutions from the region Karlsruhe. It promotes the transfer of new developments made by innovative enterprises to a broad public. The mobile region Karlsruhe is to be noticed in Germany as a prominent cluster for mobile solutions.
• EnergieForum Karlsruhe. One of the major elements to ensure success in locational policy is to supply the local population and companies with sufficient and reasonably priced energy on a long-term basis. Stadtwerke Karlsruhe (the municipal energy company) started years ago to use hydraulic power, wind energy and photovoltaics for power production. When as a result of the efforts made by Karlsruhe’s Economic Development Department, geothermal companies settled in the area, this was a further step towards innovative and environment-friendly power production. But this will not be sufficient in view of fast-rising energy prices and shrinking world energy reserves. The Karlsruhe Economic Development Department therefore initiated an Energy Forum, a discussion panel bringing together more than 150 experts from universities, higher education and research institutions active in the most various fields of science. Creating dense networks they co-operate on future-oriented strategies, concepts, innovations and model projects designed for the energy production of tomorrow that will respect the environment. A sustainable protection of resources and of the climate will not be possible without using innovative processes such as linking large power plants to decentralised plants, for example micro-co-generation units, fuel cells, wind energy and photovoltaic plants, thus forming virtual power plants. The technological basis for these virtual power plants is being developed at the faculty of computer science of Karlsruhe’s Technical University. Karlsruhe is also in the lead in terms of nanotechnology, a technology that is promising, in particular, for the development of new materials. This example proves once more that both in national and international competition, Karlsruhe has a strong innovative capacity in the field of resource-saving and ecologically-friendly power production and energy efficiency.

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In Karlsruhe international companies like

• DaimlerChrysler
• Siemens
• Bosch
• Michelin
• L'Oreal
• SEW Eurodrive
• LUK
• SAP

and in particular medium-sized companies already use the cluster initiatives and their environment.

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The focus of the Economic Development Department Karlsruhe is to have a strong cooperation between the cluster management, the research institutes and the industries/companies within the clusters. Therefore the advantages of the engagement in the cluster have to be transparent for all the partners. The main topic is the implementation of ways to run the clusters more efficient. On our point of view the excellent service of a cluster management will attract interest not only of cooperation partners but also of investments.

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