DigitalHubs in Lower Saxony: Regional expertise promotes digital innovations

Seeing regionality as an opportunity: This is a central aspect that the DigitalHubs.Niedersachsen adopt in order to leverage the great potential of exciting ideas, technically different approaches and a strong will to implement overarching digital transformation projects that lies in the various parts of Lower Saxony. By bundling local expertise in the hubs, the synergies, innovations and business models created there can be transferred to a regional or even state-wide level in order to offer added value and a competitive advantage to Lower Saxony as a business location as a whole.

Back in February of this year, the Digitalagentur Niedersachsen presented various examples of successful implementations of DigitalHubs as part of its online seminar series “DIGITAL VORAUS“. Due to the great positive response, a follow-up was announced early on, which presented three more successful examples of DigitalHubs to the participants of the online event on April 28, 2022. Under the motto “Making digitalization in Lower Saxony tangible”, Nele Bracht from the Lower Saxony Digital Agency once again led through the one-hour programme, which was once again opened by Lower Saxony’s State Secretary for Digitalization Stefan Muhle with a welcoming address.

Michael Schnaider, Managing Director of IT-DienstleistungsGmbH Emsland, kicked off the presentation of the innovation centers with a talk on the Digital Innovation Hub Emsland. Located in a former railroad repair workshop in Lingen, the hub is aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and startup founders, offering them space and tools for the targeted development of digital innovations. Connected to it.emsland, the Digital Innovation Hub Emsland offers this target group comprehensive support in the implementation of innovations in the fields of AI, cloud, big data and IoT solutions. An integrated webinar studio and a dedicated conference lab are also available for founders to use for training formats or supra-regional digital collaborations. Andree Josef, Chairman of iuk Unternehmensnetzwerk Osnabrück e.V., then reported on the XR-InnovationHub Osnabrück. This hub bundles the numerous existing know-how in the greater Osnabrück area in the areas of virtual and augmented reality as well as extended reality, with the aim of substantially developing and merging them into an XR ecosystem (cross reality). With the XR InnovationHub, the Osnabrück region is therefore setting out to achieve greater national appeal in this segment in order to acquire skilled workers on the one hand, but also to develop a locational advantage through innovation leadership. The highlight of the presentation was a “virtual excursion” into the XR working world, in which Osnabrück SMEs already have the opportunity to gain learning experience in the field of extended reality in a metaverse. Finally, Arne Brökers from consortium leader Dressler Automation GmbH presented the DStation KreativCampus with the Hub4Land incubator, which is still under construction. The project, located in Schöppenstedt in the district of Wolfenbüttel, is intended to enable urban working in a rural setting in the future. To this end, an old country estate has been gradually transformed into a melting pot for innovation in the Wolfenbüttel region with modern technology and attractive open co-working spaces and seminar rooms. The new Hub4Land incubator also provides young start-ups and their teams with intensive support on site for six months to help them realize their ideas and subsequently implement digital products. The aim is to permanently integrate the players in the local economic processes in order to sustainably strengthen regional development.

In the online seminar series “DIGITAL VORAUS”, the Digitalagentur Niedersachsen focuses on current topics relating to digitalization every month. The digital agency is part of the Innovationszentrum Niedersachsen GmbH.