Überlingen – ELEMENT 3-5 GmbH has convinced the TOP 100 jury: The committee elected the medium-sized company from Baseweiler near Aachen as "Innovator of the Year" in size class A (up to 50 employees in Germany). This puts ELEMENT 3-5 in first place in this class. Ranga Yogeshwar congratulated the company on winning the title at the German SME Summit on Friday, June 27, in Mainz. The science journalist accompanied the TOP100 innovation competition, which is being held for the 32nd time, as a mentor.
Do innovations just come about by chance or are they the result of structured innovation management? 262 out of 364 medium-sized participants, including ELEMENT 3-5, successfully passed the selection process led by innovation researcher Professor Nikolaus Franke and received the TOP 100 seal (maximum 100 per size class) on 1 February, 2025. The best three medium-sized companies in each of the three size classes then entered an additional selection round. The TOP 100 jury, consisting of well-known personalities from politics, media, science and business, then selected the "Innovator of the Year" per size class, i.e. the first-place winner. The title was officially awarded at the German SME Summit in Mainz's Rheingoldhalle.
In size class A (up to 50 employees), the committee decided on ELEMENT 3-5. In its statement, the jury writes:
"ELEMENT 3-5 GmbH was founded in 2010 as a spin-off of RWTH Aachen University and is a pioneer in the field of compound semiconductor technology. The Next Level Epitaxy (NLE) developed by the company is an alternative manufacturing process for semiconductor layers that represents a radical improvement over previous industrial practice: lower temperatures, higher output, better component quality and drastically lower environmental impact. At the same time, manufacturing costs are falling drastically. ELEMENT 3-5 thus offers answers to one of the central challenges of the semiconductor industry: making higher-performance materials economically and sustainably usable. After around 15 years of intensive research, development and testing, the company is about to enter the market in 2025. The first systems will be delivered to pilot customers in the course of the year.
ELEMENT 3-5 is an example of technology-oriented entrepreneurship in the deep tech sector – with a clearly structured, complementary management team, a high level of personal innovation participation and a strategy consistently geared towards industrial scaling and technology transfer. The innovation climate at ELEMENT 3-5 is characterized by a research-oriented, technology-driven working environment that promotes interdisciplinary cooperation, a high level of personal responsibility and fast feedback cycles. Essential elements of the lived innovation culture are daily engineering meetings, in which technical challenges are openly discussed and solved together, as well as weekly tech talks, which serve the cross-departmental exchange of knowledge. New ideas and suggestions for improvement can be easily submitted via a QR code-based system that is evaluated monthly. This structured but low-threshold idea collection ensures that impulses from all areas of the company are heard.
At the same time, ELEMENT 3-5 pursues a clear open innovation approach, which is characterized by close cooperation with industrial partners, research institutions and political networks. The aim is not to develop our own technology in isolation, but to continuously develop it in exchange with relevant players and bring it to industrial maturity."
About TOP 100:
the competition Since 1993, compamedia has been awarding the TOP 100 seal for special innovative strength and above-average innovation success to medium-sized companies. Since 2002, the scientific management has been in the hands of Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Franke. Franke is the founder and chairman of the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. With 27 research awards and over 200 publications, he is one of the world's leading innovation researchers. The mentor of TOP 100 is the science journalist Ranga Yogeshwar. The project partners are the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft for the Promotion of Applied Research and the Association of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (BVMW). The magazine manager magazin accompanies the company comparison as a media partner, the magazine "ZEIT für Unternehmer" as a cooperation partner. More information and registration at www.top100.de.
