As products become more digitized, customers are focusing less on the product itself. The customer experience or solution is no longer created solely by the product, but rather through the interaction of software, E/E, and hardware, as well as individual solutions or solutions from other companies. Software is the main driver of innovation and differentiation.

At our Munich Expert Forum on November 11, 2022, we therefore focused on the current trend toward strongly software-centric R&D organizations. We asked ourselves:

• What challenges do today’s R&D teams face in developing software-centric products?
• How can the software best be decoupled from the hardware in the architecture?
• And what are the patterns of success and approaches to solutions in the design of software-centric R&D?

Five experts shared their insights on the current challenges in R&D through their practical contributions. We have summarized the key points from the presentations and accompanying discussions for you in this summary card. The result: the seven most important success factors for a perfect symbiosis of hardware and software in R&D.