• Published on 18 Dec 2012
• About ARTEMIS

The president of ARTEMIS-ia will retire

At the end of this year, Klaus Grimm will be retiring from his position at Daimler AG  and as president of the ARTEMIS Industry Association. Looking back at the time he took over the presidency from Yrjö Neuvo, he admits that during this early phase of the programme he faced the considerable challenge of ramping up and keeping the programme running smoothly and overcoming a number of hurdles that were present due to the way in which the joint undertaking had been constructed.

What are the main highlights of your time as president of ARTEMIS-IA ? And what progress have you seen?
I would say that one highlight is that we made good progress in achieving this challenge. Another highlight would be the progress we have made in achieving our goal of overcoming fragmentation in research, development and innovation. We have our SRA that serves as a guiding principle and our latest success of the ARTEMIS Innovation Pilot Projects, which I believe are the right steps towards defragmentation. Another highlight is our ability to establish very good project clusters in specific areas, especially in safety and reliability where we aim to develop reference technology platforms in projects like CESAR and MBAT. 

Another area in which we have made good progress is in cross-sectoral activities. For example, tool platforms, centres of innovation excellence and standardisation activities. Also the good degree of involvement from SMEs has been very pleasing and the programme has really proven itself to be industry driven. And it’s really pan-European. We have on average seven countries per project, something that underlines that we are heading in the right direction to achieve the overall ARTEMIS goals.

What would you consider to be the greatest value that you brought to the organisation?
I think I was able to provide some good support for solid sustainable management of the interests of the Industry Association. I believe I  could be a significant contributor to bundling these interests, supported of course by the presidium and the office. I couldn’t have achieved this on my own without their help. And the second area of value I had was to moderate the different interests of the various stakeholders. I think this is one of my skills, to be a good moderator. Sometimes it was quite difficult to reach a compromise between the European Commission, the member states and the Industry Association. And in my era we also managed to establish a very good and fruitful ‘friendship’ with ITEA. So I am  satisfied that I was able to moderate these processes quite well.

What do you feel is the biggest success during you tenure?
As I already mentioned, we made a really good step towards bundling forces, which is one of the chief ARTEMIS aims. And when I look at the more than 200 members of the Industry Association and all the countries involved, I think this progress has been a real success.

What is your fondest memory of ARTEMIS?
I really appreciated working with so many important and influential people from industry and the scientific community from all over Europe. And the appreciation from the different stakeholders for my contribution to ARTEMIS. I heard from many of them that they are quite disappointed that I will be leaving, so that makes me feel very appreciated.

What does the future hold for you?
After five years of commuting between Berlin and Stuttgart, I am relishing the time I will have to spend doing things with my wife and certainly enjoying more of my home city and other nice places all over of the world, something I have not had too much opportunity for over the past five years.

What parting message would you like to give to the people/colleagues you leave behind?
I would like to encourage them to keep going, to stress and underline the importance of embedded systems as the neural system of society, as we say in our SRA. And what I have learned is the need to spread the responsibility over many shoulders. I would like to encourage all ARTEMIS-IA members to contribute actively to all the activities, at least the Steering Board and our Working Groups, because I feel we still do not have enough people who really actively contribute. And, of course, good luck and every success in the discussions on the future of ARTEMIS.