22 companies in Carinthia have undergone an audit by Carinthia University of Applied Sciences to gauge their ability to innovate. WILD scored well above average in all categories.

Strategy [&] Framework Conditions, People [&] Corporate Culture, Knowledge [&] Ideas, Organisational Structures [&] Methods. There is a long list of influencing factors which determine a company’s innovation power. This is already the second time this year that Carinthia University of Applied Sciences has dealt with this topic and subjected 22 small and medium size enterprises to an innovation audit. “We believe that establishing and boosting these companies’ power of innovation is an important contribution to Carinthia’s role as a business location”, says Dr. Erich Hartlieb, director of the industrial engineering programme and professor for innovation and technology management. “Our innovation audit is a scientifically founded service that helps to identify and further improve the individual technology and innovation potential of SMEs.”

WILD demonstrated strengths in all areas in the recent investigation. “This is no coincidence but the result of a continuous innovation management”, explains Markus Fontano, project manager at WILD Electronics. The corporate strategy of the WILD Group undergoes refinement twice a year to address current topics and to prepare the company for future requirements. A lot of innovation power also comes from WILD’s roadmaps. The Technology Roadmap (TRM) focuses on 12 innovative fields of technology in which WILD continuously improves its know-how and identifies developments and trends. The Service Roadmap (SRM) provides 13 service modules which give customers a decisive competitive edge in every phase of their product and value creation process.

State-of-the-art working methods

In addition, WILD is currently training a new innovation assistant. His task is to find and develop new opportunities for innovations. Interns at WILD are also given a relatively large scope for manoeuvre. “We assign them to topics that they have to deal with on their own. As a result, we can also learn from the new working methods and approaches of the young generation, which we then sometimes adopt”, says Fontano.

Carinthia University of Applied Sciences and WILD enjoy a long-standing cooperation in a number of different project topics. Moreover, the system partners is a much-coveted employer for graduates and extra-occupational students.