German drugmaker Merck has opened its Innovation Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, aiming to promote the innovation potential of its employees and give external innovators the opportunity to develop their ideas with Merck's support.
The company says the two-storey building, which has a surface area of more than 1,400m2, offers room for the exchange of ideas.
Apart from the official opening of the present Innovation Centre, Merck has laid the cornerstone for a future Innovation Centre, which will form the heart of the expanded global headquarters in 2018.
Over the next five years, until 2020, Merck KGaA will invest a total of around €1bn in the Darmstadt site. Of this, €17m has been allocated to the Innovation Centre officially opened today, and €69m to the future Innovation Centre.
In order to promote the development of the Rhine-Main region into an ideas hub, the Innovation Centre will be opened to founders and start-ups from the healthcare, life science and performance materials sectors.
Through Merck's Accelerator programme, selected start-ups receive strategic and operational advice over a period of three months, as well as financial support of €25,000.
Karl-Ludwig Kley, Chief Executive of Merck, said: 'The Innovation Centre offers an environment in which ideas can freely unfold and pioneering spirit is supported. I am firmly convinced that this will lead to a hotbed of new technologies that are capable of transforming us and the world we live in in the long term.'
