Excellence that benefits the customer

A winning team: the 2007 Daimler Research Awards laureates

 

December is an exciting month for engineers working in the Research and Development departments at Daimler. That’s when the shortlist for the company’s research award is announced and a top-flight jury has to make its final decision.

First presented in 1994, the award is known lightheartedly as Daimler’s Nobel Prize. However, in truth, there’s more than a just passing similarity between the selection criteria applied for the two awards. The Nobel Prize is awarded, in the words of the bequest of the Swedish chemist and industrialist, to scientists “who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.” This emphasis upon benefit and utility — for the company and, most importantly, for its customers — is likewise a fundamental criterion of the Daimler Research Award. In 2007, the award was presented for the first time in two categories, namely Innovative Product Developments and Process Innovations.