Prof. Dr. Knut Blind

Prof. Knut Blind was a senior researcher and head of department at Fraunhofer ISI between 1996 and 2010, before returning to Fraunhofer ISI in October 2019 as the coordinator of the Business Unit Regulation and Innovation. Between 2010 and 2019, he worked in the Innovation Management Department of the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems as a project manager. Since 2006, he has also been Professor for Innovation Economics at the Technical University Berlin. Between 2008 and 2016, he also held the Endowed Chair in Standardization at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam.

His research focus is on analyzing the connection between regulation and innovation. Specifically, on the one hand, he deals with the impacts of regulatory framework conditions on the innovation behavior of companies, which he explores on both a macroeconomic and microeconomic level. On the other hand, he analyzes standardization as a form of self-regulation in formal institutions, but also in consortia as a knowledge and technology transfer channel in the context of research and development, and in the context of public procurement, cluster promotion and state regulation as other instruments of innovation policy. Another research focus is on intellectual property rights, from patents to open source licenses. His publications are generally based on econometric analyses of economic statistics and other indicators, some of which he developed himself, but also on survey data. They are listed here. He was elected a member of the German Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech) in 2017 due to his scientific achievements.

The Berlin Innovation Panel was launched in 2012 on his initiative. More than 5,000 companies based in Berlin are surveyed each year about their innovation activities. In the same year, he also initiated the German Standardization Panel, together with the German Institute for Standardization. As an expert, he advises international organizations, such as the World Bank, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), but also the OECD, the European Commission, the European Patent Office (EPO), the European Committee for Standardization (CEN), the European Investment Bank (EIB) and various national ministries.

Knut Blind obtained a Bachelor of Arts from Brock University in Canada before completing a German diploma in Economics at the University of Freiburg. Subsequently, he obtained a PhD from the University of Freiburg in a research project funded by the Daimler and Benz Foundation on the subject of IT security. His habilitation from the faculty of Economics at Kassel University concerned the economic aspects of standardization.