Commissioned by the City of Nürnberg (Referat für Wirtschaftsförderung und Wissenschaft), Reichert Consulting developed a strategy proposal on the basis of qualitative analysis and stakeholder interviews, which she presented at the City Council of Nürnberg on 28 June 2023. The strategy, which was published in July 2023,  takes an analysis of strengths and potential in the triple helix cooperation between universities, businesses and the public sector organisations located in the city as a foundation for its focus on new multi-stakeholder cooperation formats in four priority fields of action that are at the core of today’s key transformation processes (energy and digital transition). The priority areas build on Nürnberg’s dense research and innovation portfolio in new energy systems, digital services and data sciences, as well as health care and social innovation.

A central recommendation concerns joint strategic initiatives and services in recruiting high potentials and highly qualified researchers and innovators to Nuremberg, enhancing and marketing its quality as an open densely networked creative environment.

At the conference on Handlungskoordination an deutschen Hochschulen on 4-5 May 2023, which Reichert helped prepare as part of the project Lernwelt Hochschule  (Learning Environments in Higher Education), Reichert discussed the cultural, institutional and system conditions for innovative learning environments in her Plenary Talk (Wie orchestrieren wir den Kulturwandel? Internationale Wegweiser für eine “Währungsreform” in der Hochschulentwicklung) and Plenary Panel, taking good practices from other European higher education systems as a stimulus for discussing cultural change at German higher education institutions.

The key findings and recommendations of Reichert Consulting’s Evaluation Study of Tenure Track Professorships and New Hiring Procedures in Austria (Neue Wege zur Professur in Österreich. Chancen der institutionellen Steuerung und individuellen Laufbahnentwicklung mit den neuen Berufungs- und Auswahlverfahren nach §99 Abs.4 und Abs.5 Universitätsgesetz.) were presented and discussed on 7 March 2023 at a Conference with University Leadership of Austria’s 22 universities.

Commissioned by the Austrian Ministry of Education, Science and Research, Reichert evaluated the new professorial hiring procedures and career tracks that have been introduced in Austria in 2016 with the aim of improving access to and international competitiveness of professorial positions. The legislative innovation proved to be an asset for strategic steering by the universities, improving access to international talent at an earlier career stage and the proportion of female professors. While the portfolio of professorial positions is now widely seen to offer a flexible set of different professorships, some further attention to staff development and onboarding are among the recommendations for improvements.

For more than a decade NTNU has been successfully supporting a carefully selected set of particularly strong and internationally visible research and technology areas as institutional strategic priorities, with the aim of supporting interdisciplinary research and education and enhancing the international visibility of these strong overarching research areas. With an in-depth analysis and external view, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology wanted to assess the effectiveness of its Strategic Priority Areas as a strategic steering instrument. As chair of the international evaluation panel, Reichert helped design the evaluation process and questionnaires and wrote the final report of the international panel, which showed the achievements and added value of the strategic instrument as well as recommending some measures to embed the strategic priority areas even more strongly in the regular institutional strategic development and governance. The external panel’s report, which was submitted on 24 June 2022 and which Reichert presented to the institutional and faculty leadership on 30 August 2022, served as stimulus for the adaptation of the SPA instrument for future strategic development cycles.

As member of the Steering Committee of the European Commission’s Project Knowledge Ecosystems, Reichert contributed to the large-scale study which addresses the need for a strengthened European Research Area (ERA) through enhanced interconnected Knowledge Ecosystems or ERA Knowledge Hubs across Europe. By collecting strategic intelligence and piloting potential measures, the study contributes to the implementation of the ERA Communication in relation to four of its strategic priorities: ’Nourishing talents for excellence’, ‘European Research Career Framework’, ‘Strengthening the public science system through synergies with the European Education Area’, and ‘Strengthening innovation ecosystems for knowledge circulation and valorisation’. The study investigates the organisation and spread of ecosystems at EU, national, regional and local levels, the role of universities and research organisations, the circulation of knowledge by individual researchers and innovation talents, as well as the potential  legal  and  financial  measures to  support research careers and cooperation. It consists of a set of in-depth analyses on the above mentioned themes that were published in 2022 and can be downloaded here.