Entrepreneurial innovation is Germany’s most valuable resource. The German Federation of Industrial Research Associations - AiF in short - is the leading national organization promoting applied research and development benefiting Germany’s small and medium-sized businesses. It builds up alliances together with partners from industry, science and government in order to turn ideas into successful products, processes or services in the market. As an industry-driven organization, the AiF aims at initiating applied research and development (R&D) for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as well as qualifying the new generation of academics in innovative fields and organizing the distribution of scientific knowledge.

100 industrial research associations with approx. 50,000 businesses, mostly SMEs, as members, 1,200 associated research institutes and the AiF’s affiliates in Cologne and Berlin contribute to the AiF innovation network. The AiF manages public programmes of the German federal government to strengthen SME competitiveness. The AiF thus connects enterprises, research and government as well as providing a meeting ground for representatives of business and research.

The AiF e.V. is an independent industrial federation: it is financed entirely by industry and receives no institutional funding. In addition to the AiF’s permanent staff, several hundred representatives and experts – both from industry and research – work in an honorary capacity within the AiF system of collective research.