In the field of industrial research and development (R&D), it was already apparent at the time that R&D work was increasingly being outsourced to external organisations - currently with particular success in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, for example. This development was also conceivable for other sectors and for non-commercial research organisations. As part of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research's "Innovation and Technology Analysis", the IZT analysed the opportunities and risks of this emerging trend in business and science. The full title of the project was: "R&D outsourcing - innovation opportunity or risk? Explorative investigation of a new trend in the innovation and research system".

In some areas of industrial research, an increasing trend towards outsourcing research and development tasks has been observed. This study analysed the scope and significance of this trend. To this end, internet research, interviews and workshops were used to analyse the relevant "pioneering sectors" of automotive engineering, information technology and, in particular, biotech/pharma. The type of R&D tasks that were outsourced, the technology and infrastructure involved and the opportunities and risks for the "clients", for the "R&D providers" and for the German "innovation system" in general were analysed.

It turned out that R&D outsourcing was definitely a trend - but not a homogeneous one: there were differences between sectors, differences between large and small companies, differences between companies that are not research-oriented and those that are. Nevertheless, it was possible to formulate a set of initial recommendations for action a) on the outsourcing of R&D in the narrower sense, b) on research-related networking of SMEs and c) on co-operation with science. The future perspective of "Outsourcing R&D through problem-solving exchanges and tendering for prizes?" was also explored in greater depth. The surprising conclusion: R&D competitions harboured interesting potential in this respect, but were limited in their use to either rather small problems or to "very large", visionary tasks.