Thuringia is fertile ground for translating new technologies into market success. When entrepreneurs and scientists in Thuringia engage in productive collaboration, they look up to the partnership of Ernst Abbe, Otto Schott and Carl Zeiss as a historic example. This tradition has survived and thrived over the years to make Thuringia one of Europe’s primary research and technology regions. Indeed, the Erfurt-Jena-Ilmenau Technology Triangle has a reputation that stretches far beyond Thuringia’s borders, with a dense network of universities as well as industry, non-university and university research institutes.

More than two thirds of the Thuringian workforce is employed in technology oriented companies. About 3,000 people work at research institutions in the Free State. Thuringia is distinguished by an extraordinarily wide range of technology competences. These reflect the traditional diversity of the Thuringian industry and simultaneously show the consequent focusing on technological requirements of presence and future.

Most of Thuringian research institutes specialize in cutting-edge fields such as:

• Automotive
• Production and Automation Engineering
• Information and Communications Technology
• Medical Technology / Biotechnology
• New Materials
• Optics / Photonics
• Solar and Environmental Technology