Entrepreneurial Regions

The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) supports technological, scientific and economic expertise in the new federal states with various programmes under the umbrella brand, "Entrepreneurial Regions" which focus on different aspects of the innovation process. These programmes currently include "IP(T)” (InnoProfile-Transfer) and "ZIK” (Centre for Innovation Competence), "Growth Cores" (WK), "WK Potential" (WKP) and "Twenty20". In future, the BMBF will introduce a specific, nationwide, open-themed innovation funding programme in order to support the structural change of regions in a targeted manner. The “Innovation and Structural Change" concept was developed for this purpose; it is based on the experiences of Entrepreneurial Regions, and the West German states will also benefit from it by 2020 at the latest. The BMBF will launch the first "WE!" programme in 2017 as part of this. Several new funding programmes are planned under the "Innovation and Structural Change" concept.