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© Adobe Stock / adiruch na chiangmai

Yesterday afternoon, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy launched an online survey targeting innovative small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The purpose of this survey is to study the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on current and planned private-sector research, development, and innovation activities. All companies active in this field are invited to take part in the survey.

Said Federal Minister for Economic Affairs Peter Altmaier: “The purpose of our survey is to gain an overview of the difficulties currently faced by small and medium-sized companies, in particular, with regard to their research, development, and innovation activities. How does innovation work in the age of coronavirus? What lessons have companies learned from the pandemic? What could be done to support them? These are answers that can help us do more than optimise our existing funding programmes. It will also give us new insights as to what the fitness programme for our industry should look like when the worst of the crisis is over. Our objective is to support our companies to the best of our ability.”

The online survey is open until Thursday, 30 April 2020 and takes approx. 10 minutes to complete. All answers are anonymised before the analysis. The results will be fed into the Ministry’s transfer initiative, which seeks to facilitate the transition from research findings into new, marketable products and services.