IQIB Innovation Lab

IQIB

Innovation Lab

In our Innovation Lab, we work with you to design concepts and strategies for your future by first identifying the challenges and goals that are important to you. We then develop possible courses of action and measures and highlight the connections between relevant actions, framework conditions, and consequences. Your results and relevant analyses are presented in a flexible, interactive format. 

For instance, you can use our scenario tool to create energy concepts for your region and observe changes within target indicators while modifying key assumptions and technology implementation. Here you can find an example of the implementation for the district of Ahrweiler.  

In order to analyse the social aspects of knowledge production, technology development, and innovation processes for you, we use a variety of computer-assisted methods in the Innovation Lab. Our extensive network of experts enables us to advise you on a wide variety of subject areas. 

The Innovation Lab offers three main functions: 

  1. Processing, analysing, and visualising large amounts of data and complex relationships 
  2. Simulating interrelations in social systems
  3. Involving participants in the analyses

Be it a classic presentation, workshops, or hackathons—the flexibility of the Innovation Lab allows for a wide variety of applications. 

One room—many possibilities 

In order to fulfill all its main functions, the room and technology are designed to be multifunctional: As a user, you can interact with data and models, generate scenarios and compare them with each other, or clearly present all the steps of a complex project.

The Innovation Lab offers numerous interfaces to support discussions, allowing you to spontaneously contribute your own data and media, e.g., via your own notebooks or smartphones. This allows to easily present a wide variety of perspectives side by side and exchange arguments during discussions. 

The front end and back end form the infrastructure for systematic interaction between lab users, stakeholders, and scientists. 

The structure of the Innovation Lab follows the typical workflow of a research project at IQIB and supports the requirements of different use cases. 

Visible and invisible technology 

Front end: 

The front end of the Innovation Lab creates the physical working environment that you see as a user and consists of: 

  • The room, whose design follows the concept of a flexibly usable space, 
  • The on-site technology that is needed for displaying, working, visualising, and presenting. 

Back end: 

The back end is the IT infrastructure in the background. It consists of the components of the lab that are not visible to visitors: 

  • Hardware: data servers, computing clusters, visualisation and communication technology 
  • Software: simulation models, analysis and interface software, databases