Michael Wyrwich receives German grant for a project on innovation structures in East Germany and Central Eastern European countries

Associate professor Michael Wyrwich has received funding from the German Ministry of Education and Research for a new research project titled ‘’The legacy of socialist innovation systems: An analysis of innovation structures in East Germany and Central Eastern European countries“. The project is part of a larger consortium including several German universities, such as the University of Bremen and Viadrina-University Frankfurt.

The overarching objective of the larger consortium is to identify the state-socialist barriers to modernization in communist systems and to analyze their effects on socio-economic disparities compared to Western Europe, which persist until today. The focus of the project of which Michael Wyrwich is the principal investigator, is on innovative actors and structures in East Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. The funding for this project is € 280,000.

Together with colleagues from Friedrich-Schiller-University (FSU) Jena, Wyrwich aims to examine what role the (changed) structures of knowledge exchange and research cooperation play for the development of innovation in these post-socialist contexts and what the differences and similarities are in the development of innovation between East Germany on the one hand and the Czech Republic and Poland on the other. The project will start on 1 October 2023 and will run until September 2025.

Innovation important for economic development

Wyrwich, associate professor at the Department of Innovation Management & Strategy of the Faculty of Economics and Business, looks forward to starting the project. “I aim to understand the roots of poor innovation performance in the post-socialist context. This is important as innovation is important for economic development and as deteriorating economic conditions in the aftermath of the fall of the Iron Curtain is are a fertile breeding ground for populist political movements – especially in post-socialist regions such as East Germany and countries like Poland. In this project, the focus is also on firms and their innovation behavior in post-socialist contexts.”

Questions? Please contact Michael Wyrwich.