On the way to Digital Valley in the Bergische Region

The digital transformation does not only refer to the introduction of digital technologies, it also describes the complex change of corporate strategies, business models, processes and corporate cultures in the operational environment through the use of these technologies. In the context of this transformation, digital data and the corresponding processes for making them usable are becoming increasingly important and hold enormous potential for value creation. Globally positioned companies from the digitization industry, such as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Google, are fighting for the crown of the leading digital company and investing large sums in research and development in these areas. In particular, investments in the early recruitment of young talent and the long-term retention of established employees are growing rapidly. Against this backdrop, many small and medium-sized companies in Germany, highly specialized and belonging to the so-called hidden champions, are faced with the challenge of not missing out on the digital transformation and of understanding and tapping into the resulting potential for their respective areas. To do this, they particularly need access to excellent young talent. In North Rhine-Westphalia, and especially in the Bergisches Land region with a very high density of small and medium-sized hidden champions, it is important to retain existing junior staff in the region and convince them of the resulting potential at an early stage. An early and up-to-date bringing together of students and the regionally based companies already during their studies is therefore more urgently necessary than ever before.

For this purpose, the TMDT is developing the DIVABRE platform, which promotes the networking of university research and teaching with regional small and medium-sized businesses. DIVABRE represents a consistent further development and supplementation of measures already begun in research and teaching (introduction of computer science studies, foundation of the IZMD and BIT). On this platform, regional companies have the opportunity to provide their data-based questions in specially defined challenges. A core objective of DIVABRE is the further development of the already existing transfer activities of IZMD and BIT. DIVABRE brings together companies from the Bergisch region and students and promotes the development of solution strategies and concrete technical implementations.

Based on DIVABRE, companies can define challenges based on data provided by them, which will be solved by students. A challenge consists of a clearly defined task with an objective goal that is described by the company. Both in the conceptual design of the challenges and in the evaluation of the produced results, the institute supports by experienced scientific personnel, so that the meaningfulness and value creation for the company is guaranteed. Furthermore, it is guaranteed that not only a technical solution is developed, but also that the companies are supported in the introduction and acceptance of the developed solution in the long term. Through a targeted embedding of DIVABRE in teaching (especially in the accompanying courses in the Bachelor and Master Applied Machine Learning and Deep Learning as well as in the offered seminars on Data Science) an incentive is created for students to deal with DIVABRE.

Click here to go to the DIVABRE platform: Digital Valley