The first disruptive innovation of the Agency for Disruptive Innovation is the Agency for Disruptive Innovation.
Rafael Laguna de la Vera, founding director of SPRIND (quoted in Der Wiarda Blog, 14 September 2020)
The primary role of Germany’s Federal Agency for Breakthrough Innovation (SPRIND) seems to be dynamizing the German system of science and research which, according to Germans, is insufficiently dynamic.
The idea for the agency was raised under Merkel’s chancellorship as part of the (then) latest iteration of the German high-tech strategy. Dietmar Harhoff, an academic well known on the S&T policy scene, chaired its founding commission, constituted in early 2019, with a mix of individuals from businesses, universities and bipartisan representatives from the German parliament, the latter, namely, Manja Schüle (SDP) and Stefan Kaufmann (CDU).
In September 2019, the commission appointed Rafael Laguna de la Vera, one of their own number, as director of the agency, with Leipzig declared headquarters. The “SPRIND Freedom Act” in 2023 modified the agency’s governance to give it more independence from civil service regulations and to bring it under the tutelage of a single ministry (science and research).
Important dates in the life of SPRIND
| Date | Milestone |
| December 2019 | Establishment |
| December 2023 | “SPRIND Freedom Act” (entered into force) |
| January 2025 | Evaluation: funding approach, process efficiency, governance and effectiveness of funding instruments in promoting disruptive innovation (Fraunhofer/Technopolis) |
| January 2026 | Evaluation: technical supervision of SPRIND (Fraunhofer/Technopolis) |
Official appraisal
An evaluation by Fraunhofer and the consultancy firm Technopolis, dated January 2025, made positive remarks about the agency (no public communications appear to have been made on the results of the second evaluation dated this January).
The authors of the evaluation drew attention to an important feature of the agency: reliance on a subject and technology neutral approach, unlike comparable agencies such as in the USA.
They appeared to support the approach because, according to them, it unlocked Germany’s broad innovation potential. However, they added that it ran the risk of SPRIND being blown off course by political winds; therefore the agency’s political independence was paramount. This, presumably, meant the agency’s officials must be allowed to make their own decisions without direction from ministries and that this ought to be legally protected.
In my view, this should not be read as a bureaucratic detail when we are talking about the potential entry of dangerous far right groups into state governments this year. However, it is also unclear why a government agency would serve the public more effectively outside serious democratic scrutiny.
Operationally, the report described how the agency received over 2100 ideas for disruptive innovations by September 2024; it commissioned 90 studies to analyze the disruptive innovation potential of these ideas. The agency also held nine innovation competitions, launched various R&D projects and contributed plans for the reform of the German science and innovation system. SPRIND’s public communications were singled out for congratulation.
Gizmo factory
SPRIND lists 150 research projects on its website (reviewed in February 2026). The majority are contracted to organizations in Germany, the remainder in other European countries such as Switzerland and the UK. I read through all of the projects focusing on the civilian concepts. (Not the substantial number concerning drones that presumably have military applications. SPRIND really loves drones.)
In general, when you have projects attempting to disrupt incumbency, new ideas will face a very hard road. The problem has never been a lack of original ideas.
For example, a number of SPRIND’s projects focus on “green” chemicals and plastics recycling. The fundamental challenge for any genuinely “green” proposals is the petrochemical incumbency, which of course has enough of its own capital to invest in anything should it wish, but sticks instead with sweating depreciated innovation assets. The industry thereby deploys many mechanisms, some extremely elaborate, to confound its critics.
To support its “green” innovators, SPRIND ought to undercut incumbents. Logically, this would include funding to environmental groups campaigning against the petrochemical industry such as by calling for sun-setting dates on dangerous xenobiotics and holding the industry liable for environmental remediation.
A second category of projects that often face problems are those that seek to realize new value from genomic data. Biotechnology has been around for decades and has been highly capitalized. Unless there is a striking new paradigm emerging from biological research, or a previously unrecognized medical problem, it is probable that the pharmaceutical industry already thought about it.
Batteries are the third category of projects that could suggest grave difficulties. The extent to which SPRIND can make a meaningful contribution to the exploration of different battery chemistry is to my mind questionable. This is an arcane field which has long featured in the portfolios of science funding agencies around the world. There are no shortages of candidate battery chemistries (alongside believers in, and detractors of, each chemistry).
Another round of experiments (and computer modeling) targeted at specific chemistry might, therefore, not be the step SPRIND needs to take. Contributions to our fundamental understanding of how batteries work that offer general frameworks seem to me more useful public investments.
All of the above taken into account, I came up with a list of 30 of the 150 projects that caught my eye. The topics varied across medical applications and material science. It included an analogue computer that looks like a hobbyist’s dream from the last century and is sold with the slogan “Analog Computing for the Future”.
Everyone will have their personal opinions about which projects are the most interesting, but I think overall this is quite a good performance.
Conclusion
That being said, and in light of the aims of SPRIND, we also have to consider the degree to which these projects, taken together, might dynamize German science and innovation. This is a difficult question to answer because it relates somewhat to the way SPRIND’s gizmos shape our material world (and our material culture). In this regard, the analogue computer, if it were to be widely used in German schools as a learning tool, might have an effect. Each gizmo has to be considered in a similar way, alone, as well as, perhaps, the collective impact of all of them together.
Such an analysis would be easier if we knew the identity of Germany’s major innovative contributions over the last few years and could therefore make comparisons (I mean an account that goes beyond MP3). It seems, currently, policymakers have a better grasp of the ingenuity of China, evidenced by LEDs, solar panels, electric vehicles, and so on, than they do of Germany.
SPRIND seems integral to the high-tech strategies that Germany operated for 20 years and could be evaluated as such. A 2018 Fraunhofer study by Daimer, et al., based on its first decade concluded that “Germany’s technological competitiveness remains high. The high-tech strategy has certainly made a significant contribution to this.” The strategies coincided with increased expenditure of R&D in both the public and private sectors (including an increase of 90000 in the research workforce between 2006 and 2009).
Since that time, what happened in terms of policy evaluation is unknown to me. But the fundamental challenge with these kinds of policies is always that they draw from national innovation system concepts. To the contrary, it is probable that the goals sought could not be achieved, even in principle, through adjustments to national policies (no matter how cleverly designed) and, therefore, the policies will always fall short. This is not to say such policies are a waste of time, far from it, but that they would struggle to live up to the more extreme expectations of national renewal suggested by some of the rhetoric.
The German high-tech strategy, notably intermingled with Merkel-era discourses like Industry 4.0, seems now to be considered subpar compared to Made in China 2025 (the latter, published in 2018). But when European science policy analysts look at China, they forget the enormous amount of social and political change the country underwent over the past century that has been part and parcel of its successes as well as failures. Paradoxically, as many of us know in Europe, “disruption” is enthusiastically evoked by incumbents yet it also appears to mean leaving their own incumbency untouched.
In a recent flagship report by the German Science and Humanities Council (WR), scientists in academia and the public sector expressed their commitment to public service in a liberal social democracy and a desire to “actively shape social change”. This included commitments to progressive reform of scientific institutions in regard to gender imbalance, misogyny and discrimination. These reforms have been repeatedly raised across many reports over the years but, despite being pivotal to tapping dynamic forces, have never been completed.
Notes:
Cuhls, et al., 2019, Sprunginnovationen: Konzeptionelle Grundlagen und Folgerungen für die Förderung in Deutschland: Kurzstudie (Fraunhofer ISI). A “must read” for all those officials proposing agencies inspired by DARPA.
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