Interview with Dr. Ulrike Tagscherer

A lot of ideas sound good at first. International robotics and automation leader KUKA invests a lot of time in investigating which innovations are ultimately put into action. Dr. Ulrike Tagscherer is responsible for this process in her role as chief innovation officer at KUKA. In this interview, she explains that her work is about much more than just new products and tells us what sustainability, HR development and the digital transformation have to do with innovation.

She was highly interested in China as far back as during her undergraduate studies and when she did her doctorate in Heidelberg. Dr. Ulrike Tagscherer is also active in the areas of leadership, sustainability and diversity. She is a board member of Wissenschaftsstatistik gGmbH, a nonprofit research and data expertise center operated by Stifterverband, and a member of the international affairs working group at the German National Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech). In 2024, the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) named her as one of ten women helping to shape the future of robotics.

Dr. Ulrike Tagscherer began working at the headquarters of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in 2000. Her responsibilities there included business development for all of Asia. Afterward, she moved to Fraunhofer ISI and from there to an ISI partner institute at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. She spent seven years working as an expert on Chinese innovation systems. She also worked on industry projects in the automotive and pharmaceuticals sector in China. She returned to Fraunhofer headquarters in Munich in 2015 and worked on business model innovation there for two years, most recently in the role of deputy head of department. Tagscherer moved to Augsburg-based robotics and automation provider KUKA in 2017 and currently serves as the chief innovation officer there.

 

 

Technical innovation is a creative process. In your view, what does it take to put innovation into action within an organization?

 

Support from the management is at least as important as governance, a set of rules that defines in detail how we play with ideas. One of my first acts at KUKA was to terminate a big and really exciting project, although I would have liked things to turn out differently. We set up a workshop and had learning conversations with users. Thanks to the structured, systematic approach we took, we had facts in hand, so it was no longer just that team, who believed in the idea. The management looked at our data and stopped the project. Since then, we’ve had a rules-based innovation process at the company. But no one decides about an idea on their own. All group CEOs and managing directors are involved instead.

 

Implementing changes at complex companies is definitely not always easy. At the same time, it is necessary to respond to changes in the overall environment.

 

Companies grow by delivering, by bringing products to market with maximum efficiency. Our whole organization is geared toward efficiency, like a well-oiled machine. To be resilient as a company, you also need to make space to systematically validate new business. And all of it has to take place fast, with little cost. That space should also be subject to different KPIs and governance rules and different decisions. At the start, there’s definitely no need for a business plan yet.

 

What is that part like at your company?

 

Every year, we put on a company-wide innovation challenge, which always revolves around certain subject areas identified with the general management as part of the strategy. We have a digital platform where people can post ideas. Then, a large number of employees from all across the company assess the ideas according to certain criteria.

 

The ideas are evaluated by various employees selected from throughout the company. The main criteria for this are strategic fit, estimated business potential, and team composition.

 

The winning ideas advance and become initial innovation projects. We pay a lot of attention to cultivating diversity and internationality at this stage, too. Once the winning teams and ideas have been chosen, people get down to work. The teams spend three months working three days a week to see whether they really understand the customer’s pain points.

 

But these projects aren’t yet live within the company?

 

We’re on the sixth iteration of the process now, and we’ve collected about 900 ideas this way. Out of those 900 ideas, we’ve “only” launched 24. Three of our projects have transitioned to the business side in the meantime. A healthy stop rate for projects once they have been launched is about 90 percent, so if there are ten projects, we expect to be able to incorporate one into the company’s portfolio. The process is set up with that in mind. At the start, the ideas all look great, and then we go about systematically reducing the innovation risk to try to identify the new lines of business we should actually invest in.

 

What specific criteria do you look at?

 

When it comes to innovation, there are three things we look for: desirability, feasibility and viability. Desirability means: Does the customer need this? Are we solving a problem so important that customers will line up at our doorstep? And then feasibility is about more than just the technical practicability. Do we have the right skills and abilities in-house, do we have sufficient investment funds, and so on. And in terms of viability, we ask: Should we do this? Does it fit with our strategy, and can we earn money this way?

 

So, then, innovation also means saying goodbye to a lot of projects?

 

Yes, it does. To give you an example, we had a hospital automation project that was really far along, but then we realized that even though there was a need, healthcare facilities wouldn’t have paid the costs involved. Ultimately, it wouldn’t have been a worthwhile investment. That’s a bitter pill to swallow, especially for the teams that believe in their ideas. In the corporate sector, though, it’s important to be able to let go of ideas when there is evidence that they won’t turn a profit, even if the sunk costs are high.

 

There is a window of opportunity for every innovation. You can either be too early or too late. Once we see a need, though, our platform lets us go back and revisit a certain subject. Teams report there from their perspective about progress, developments, talks, what worked and what led to the project being stopped.

 

Leadership is another of your themes.

 

Indeed, the topic of leadership is very important to me. People who participate in an innovation project are constantly having to step outside their comfort zone. They often experience so much personal growth as part of a project like this that they can take on different roles at the company afterward. You have a lot of responsibility, experience amazing opportunities for personal development and prove that you can move things forward. The teams make their own decisions, and because they’re doing something new, there’s no one in the entire company that knows better. We've been seeing more and more of our innovators coming into our global talent program. So, innovation also has a lot to do with HR development. My role in all this is to create overall conditions that enable employees to experience this kind of growth. I really believe service is part of my role as a manager.

 

You worked at Fraunhofer for a long time. What has stuck with you from that time?

 

Definitely the funding model and the experience that projects don’t have to be fully funded all the way through. That informs some of my work at KUKA as well. As part of our governance process, we work together with the management with profit and loss responsibility to decide which projects will receive time and money. The teams receive resources and support in the form of training and other assistance from my department for three months when we look at the problem-solution fit and then for another six months, which we spend exploring the product-market fit, meaning whether we can actually put the plan into action. However, the segments have to bear their own personnel costs from the outset.

 

Before we bring a product into series development, we form a virtual start-up that needs a business owner. A department really has to be convinced by an idea. So that whoever takes on the project also bears the costs. It's very similar to industrial customers at Fraunhofer. It's important that there is also a manager in the company who takes on the financing because  he or she is convinced that it will add value for the customer.

 

Sustainability is another important part of what you do, correct?

 

Many of the issues we face, and that includes saving the planet, require data. How big is your carbon footprint? Where do you stand? How about your supply chain? An Excel sheet isn’t enough. You need a digitalized environment. As Einstein once said, we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. So, we’ll need new innovations, new solutions. That’s why I see innovation, digital transformation and sustainability as inherently interconnected.

 

For each of our innovations, we study whether it contributes to sustainability and if so, how, and look hard for ways to shrink the carbon footprint of our developments. We have a ways to go before we’ll be able to access full environmental data across the entire supply chain. The smaller the suppliers, the harder it is to get that info. Even on the shop floor, a lot of data goes unused, since not all the elements of these complex facilities can talk to each other.

 

How important do you think projects like Gaia-X or Catena-X, which are also operated partly by the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, are?

 

I was responsible for the business model at the start of Catena-X. I’m so happy this project is still going. It’s helpful that Fraunhofer was the lead as a neutral partner. It’s really hard for companies to come together on that score. Data sovereignty is a tricky subject with a lot of unanswered questions.

 

Now we’ve come full circle to Fraunhofer. What did you take with you from Fraunhofer, personally and professionally?  

 

On a personal level, I learned a lot about how people engage in dialogue with each other. We always handled that really positively at Fraunhofer. On the one hand, you have people with forceful personalities, 100 percent convinced that they’re developing the next big thing. But other scientists have totally contrary opinions. The two sides put their arguments out there and really get into it on factual matters without it ever becoming an issue at the interpersonal level. That was really formative for me. Someone once said I was “tough on the facts, soft on people.” Thanks to that experience, I can stop a project in the morning and have coffee with the same team that afternoon.  

 

Thank you for talking to us!