Where did the impulse come from to transform MIT theory into practice?
We have always tried earlier than others to be part of the innovation and high-tech community. The Research and Innovation Center in Munich evolved step-by-step. It’s a kind of building-based lab environment. MIT Professor Allen said if people have to walk more than 30 meters to talk to each other, communication is nearly nil. So we experimented with a building design that is basically a beehive network structure, like a honeycomb. At that time, BMW’s different divisions were very powerful and autonomous. The new R&D center was part of CEO [from 1970 to 1993 Eberhard] Von Kuenheim’s drive to get those divisions working more closely together and more strategically. The overriding strategy was to think and act as a whole company, not in isolated divisions, and thus end the dominance of the “towers of power” in the organization. Von Kuenheim believed BMW would become a more efficient organization if you could bring together specialists and get them to work across divisional boundaries. Th
