As products become more digitalized, the focus for customers is shifting away from the product itself. The customer experience or solution is no longer generated exclusively by the product, but from an interaction of software. Software is the main driver of innovation and differentiation.

At our Munich Expert Forum on 2022-11-11, we therefore focused on the current development towards 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 uncoupled from the hardware in the architecture?
• And what are success patterns and solution approaches in the design of software-centric R&D?

Five experts provided insights into the current challenges of R&D with their practical contributions. We have summarized the key elements of 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.