The ideal solution would be a platform on which universities publish their current research topics and which also offers the possibility for companies to view them and become involved as partners if they are interested. Universities can also use the platform to find project partners from industry by applying for the solution of advertised tasks to be researched by companies (primarily SMEs).

An integrated match-making basically enables the automatic finding of potential partners.

We observe more and more that especially SMEs, but partly also large companies have little or no direct access to professorships or in general to research and development and thus to PhD students. In most cases, this only exists through personal relationships on the part of the chairs. In addition, smaller universities in particular often have to struggle with image problems, despite working on innovative topics, because these topics are not visible to the outside world.

On the other hand, the universities also lack insight into the companies; for example, SMEs from the direct neighborhood (Rhine-Ruhr) are often not known despite being world market leaders.

This lack of transparency means that great potential for developing and implementing a wide variety of innovative topics is not exploited. On the one hand, forward-looking ideas of companies often end up in the proverbial drawer because they do not have access to the necessary research partners and, on the other hand, research projects do not reach the operational implementation because the access to the appropriate partners of the economy is missing.

By developing a matching platform, both parties should find each other and participate from each other. Ideally, a mobile application will be developed that simply and clearly matches SME tasks and research competencies. For example, in the form of profiles, short pitches, interviews or videos. In case of a match, selected directly by the respective parties or determined automatically via an AI-based algorithm based on matching keywords, SPIN receives a notification. In this way, projects can be initiated quickly via SPIN.