The raise of remote work – is the importance of stps & aois overestimated today?

From running one of Europe's leading STPs, we know that physical proximity fosters entrepreneurship 

and innovation and transfers scientific knowledge into products that help tackle the grand challenges. 

However, in the aftermath of the pandemic, remote working is part of everyday life, with people and 

companies preferring to do most of their work from home via the internet. So as a site, we have to ask 

ourselves: is the importance of STPs & AOIs overestimated today? At the same time, we are seeing a 

serious decline in innovative ideas. This fact led us to the decision that proximity is still important, but 

that we as STPs and AOIs must change what we offer to bring people together again. Therefore, as the 

managers of Germany's largest AOI, we will explain in this paper how we have expanded our services 

and designed a new working environment to respond to this trend.