Morgenstadt Initiative welcomes new partner

Ströer joins the Morgenstadt City Insights innovation network

In March 2018, Ströer SE & Co. KGaA – a leading provider of outdoor and online advertising in Germany – became the latest partner to join the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft’s Morgenstadt City Insights innovation network. Over the next two years, the Morgenstadt experts will support Ströer in defining projects, bringing innovative products to market and gaining a foothold in the smart city sector.

Megatrends such as climate change, scarcity of resources and demographic change are transforming our towns and cities. This poses major challenges for companies, governments and research in addition to the cities themselves. Working in close collaboration with industry partners and municipal representatives, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft’s Morgenstadt City Insights innovation network has been tackling these challenges since 2012 by developing promising technologies and concepts for the cities of the future. In March 2018, the multi-channel media organization Ströer SE & Co. KG became the latest partner to join the network.

Ströer markets and operates some 230,000 advertising spaces and 20,000 street furnishing units as well several thousand websites in Germany. The company works with over 600 contractual partners based on contracts for street furnishings and advertising space, both of which Ströer has been providing in some 1200 cities for many years now. In cooperation with these cities, the company has been driving digitalization in public spaces. Thanks to its digital portfolio, Ströer has become an important partner for urban information networks in the public domain and, in this capacity, makes its own contributions to municipal visions of smart cities. The integration of information and communication technologies into a city’s infrastructure can help identify solutions for mobility, management and public safety – and solve many urban problems more quickly and efficiently. Ströer’s digital display boards that provide information about a city, for example, are placed at high-traffic locations to generate maximum attention; they can also be used strategically as smart city solutions to communicate with people. “This approach to managing city life is becoming increasingly important due to its influence on people’s attitude to life as well as their economic performance. For several years now, holistic approaches have been taken to making a city ‘smart.’ They are set to become more efficient, more technologically advanced, friendlier and greener. But what does that mean and how can we help shape this process? These are precisely the questions we’re looking to address. We’re also eager to help create an urban communication infrastructure and enhance the dissemination of information,” says Alexander Stotz, CEO Ströer Media Deutschland.

Shared objective: digital innovations for cities

The Ströer Group’s range of street furnishings ties in particularly well with the Morgenstadt initiative’s smart city concept. With its digital portfolio for urban information networks in the public domain, the Ströer Group is already making a valuable contribution to the shared vision of smart cities. In becoming a member of the Morgenstadt City Insights innovation network, Ströer aims to consolidate its strategic position and strengthen its foothold in the German and international markets for tomorrow’s smart cities. The Ströer Group and the Morgenstadt Initiative are now pursuing the common goal of driving and piloting digital innovations for the city of tomorrow. “We see considerable potential for the integration of data and digital services into a city’s infrastructure. This will provide people and municipalities with tools that simplify smart city management and help them to find solutions for mobility, management and public safety. It will also help them more quickly and efficiently solve many issues posed by urban living,” explains Christian von den Brincken, Managing Director Strategy & Innovation of the Ströer Group.

For further information, please contact the website of the Morgenstadt City Insights innovation network: https://www.morgenstadt.de/en/solutions/solutions_for_companies/innovation_partnerships.html

Fraunhofer-Institut für Arbeitswirtschaft und Organisation IAO
Nobelstraße 12
70569 Stuttgart

Natalie Pfau-Weller
Urban Governance Innovation

Fraunhofer IAO
Nobelstraße 12
70569 Stuttgart

Phone +49 711 970-2169
E-Mail natalie.pfau-weller@iao.fraunhofer.de

This release was published on openPR.