Ingpuls Top Innovator 2023

For the 3rd time, Ingpuls GmbH from Bochum impress with its innovation qualities and receives the TOP 100 seal 2023. The TOP 100 award annually selects extraordinarily innovative, medium-sized companies. The TOP 100 award ceremony will take place in June in Augsburg and will be hosted by science journalist and mentor of the Top 100 competition, Ranga Yogeshwar, who will personally congratulate Ingpuls and all other winners on their success at the award ceremony.

Propelled through the selection process by innovative power

In order to be awarded the TOP 100 seal, Ingpuls first had to prove itself and its innovative strength in a scientific selection process commissioned by compamedia, the organizer of the competition. Using more than 100 criteria from five categories, innovation researcher Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Franke, from the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration and his team examined the participating companies. The five categories of the TOP 100 selection process are as follows: Top Management Promoting Innovation, Innovation Climate, Innovative Processes and Organization, External Orientation/Open Innovation and Innovation Success. The focus of the investigation here is the question of whether the innovations of the respective company can be attributed to a random product or are systematically planned and thus repeatable in the future. Further information on the explicit test criteria.

To ensure equal opportunities in the selection process for the Top 100 award, the seal is awarded in three size categories: up to 50, 51 to 200 and more than 200 employees. For the 30th anniversary of the TOP 100 innovation competition, a particularly large number of medium-sized companies applied: 550 entered the competition. Ingpuls was one of 300 companies overall (100 companies in the corresponding size category) to enjoy the success of the award and now bears the TOP 100 seal for another year.

Third award for Ingpuls

After 2019 and 2021, Ingpuls is among the award winning TOP innovators for the third time in 2023. As an innovative materials company, Ingpuls is active in numerous industries with its products based on shape memory alloys and continues to expand its market participation, among other things through value-adding joint ventures. Together with Resonetics, Ingpuls GmbH took another major step into the medical sector in 2022, providing top-quality Nitinol for medical technology through the Ingpuls Medical joint venture.

With Ingpuls Smart Shadings, a subsidiary that was founded last year, the goal is to develop and manufacture intelligent shading solutions based on shape memory alloys.

Finally, at the end of 2022, the joint venture Ingpuls Dynamics was founded. Together with brandgroup, a medium-sized, owner-managed family business from Anröchte, Germany, Ingpuls will develop cross-industry SMA assemblies & actuators and make them available to the various markets.

Dr. Christian Großmann (CEO, Ingpuls GmbH) commented:

“The future will be shaped by those who are able to forge collaborations and successfully moderate them. This is also a major part of innovation, namely to break away from familiar business models or structures and optimize them to meet the challenges of the future. We are convinced that strong alliances can combine the best of different worlds for the benefit of our customers.”

Shape memory alloys as cross-sectional technology

In addition to medical technology and the automotive sector, industries such as aerospace, building technology and industry as well as household appliances and consumer electronics benefit from Ingpuls’ innovative solutions based on shape memory alloys.

The technology, which has been around since the 1950s, is characterized by the shape memory of metallic materials. These materials are usually made of nickel-titanium and can ‘remember’ their original shape after apparently plastic deformation due to heating. Shape memory alloys are primarily used in medical technology, but also offer numerous advantages and potential applications for the aforementioned industries. Founded in 2009 as a spin-off of the Institute for Materials of the Ruhr University Bochum, Ingpuls has made a name for itself in the field of shape memory technology since it`s foundation 15 years ago and established itself on the market. Particularly noteworthy are Ingpuls’ achievements in producing nickel-titanium alloys with extremely low levels of impurities and, in the process, greatly improving the quality of the material.

Bringing innovations to market

The scientific director of TOP 100, Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Franke, explains what the selection process is all about:

“TOP 100 is about the question of how important the innovation goal is within the company. Do routines and habits dominate, or is the company capable of questioning the existing processes, thinking creatively and in new ways, and successfully implementing them on the market? We analyze this ability on the basis of more than 100 test criteria”.

There will be another reason to celebrate on June 23, 2023: At the German SME Summit in Augsburg, all top innovators 2023 will come together to receive congratulations from science journalist and TOP 100 mentor, Ranga Yogeshwar.