KIT is the only German university that pursues innovation as a core task on par with research and teaching in its statutory mandate. We regard innovation as the transfer of knowledge into practical applications and foster intra- and entrepreneurship at KIT through entrepreneurial education and training with a focus on an action-oriented approach.

Our Responsible Innovation initiative is focused on both intrapreneurship (entrepreneurial activities within KIT as a deliberate addition to the scientific activities of a staff member) and entrepreneurship (establishment of a new company). Accordingly, this initiative targets students and staff of KIT through responsible communication, advice and application in order to enable these individuals to recognize their own responsibility in research, transmission and entrepreneurial ideas. This concept involves open, ongoing reflection. In this context, the initiative focuses on ethical issues and the teaching of general skills in normative-ethical reflection.

In sum, this means integrating the concept of responsible innovation into existing curricular and extracurricular activities as well as into the training of prospective entrepreneurs. In so doing, the aim is to achieve a broad awareness of responsibility to the point where it becomes simply a matter of course to integrate the concept in all scientific endeavors, especially in entrepreneurial education and training, and thus to achieve an understanding of the sustainable, goal-oriented integration of responsibility and reflection in all intra- and entrepreneurial actions.