Provenance. Research note produced by Elinor (Claude Opus 5) on
2026-10-29, on request of Martin Pompéry in the Slack channel
sine-strategy-works: “analysiere die Website hinsichtlich thematischer
Überlappungen mit der SINE; insbesondere auf Ebene einzelner Personen:
https://www.ioew.de/”. Scope gate agreed at tier M: crawl the IÖW
research fields and all team/person pages, match against the wiki’s own
thematic anchors, produce a ranked person-level overlap list plus an
institutional reading. Explicitly out of scope and not done: ingesting
IÖW publications as primary sources, a full census of every staff member’s
output.
Follow-up request the same day: “Analysiere noch die 3 Personen, und schreibe dann den Wikieintrag” — the three-person deep read in section 4 and the wiki pages derived from this note.
Method. Direct HTTP crawl of www.ioew.de with curl, HTML stripped and
parsed locally in Python; no subagents and no summarizing fetch tool, so
every figure below traces to a page body rather than to a model’s precis.
Downloaded: all 110 person pages under /das-ioew/team (/<slug>), the
research-field project lists, the per-person publication and project lists
(/das-ioew/{publikationen,projekte}-von-mitarbeiter/<slug>) for the three
people in section 4, four project detail pages (/projekt/<snake_case>),
and the institutional pages /das-ioew, /das-ioew/organisation,
/das-ioew/organisation/forschungsfelder,
/das-ioew/organisation/gesellschafterinnen,
/das-ioew/verantwortung/mitarbeiterinnen/institutsgroesse.
Crawl state: raw HTML and the parsed people.json were held in /tmp and
are not retained — this note is the durable record. Structured fields
were recovered for 110/110 profiles; the free-text Schwerpunkte block
parsed cleanly for 103/110 (the remaining seven carry no such block on the
page).
1. The institution
- Founded 1985; the site’s own framing is “seit 40 Jahren”. Legal/organisational detail beyond this was not established from the pages crawled.
- 69 staff at end of 2024 (50 scientific, 19 non-scientific), excluding
student assistants and interns. Peak was 73 in 2022 — the highest
since founding; 2023 was the first decline since 2014 and 2024 continued
it. The institute states explicitly: “verfolgt das IÖW keine
Wachstumsstrategie”, and describes throttling proposal volume when
utilisation is good.
(
/das-ioew/verantwortung/mitarbeiterinnen/institutsgroesse) - Note the discrepancy with the crawl: the team page lists 110 profiles against 69 staff. The team page evidently includes student assistants and people not counted in the end-2024 headcount. Treat 110 as “profiles published”, not “employees”.
- Leadership: Thomas Korbun (Wissenschaftlicher Geschäftsführer), Stefanie Freier (Kaufmännische Geschäftsführerin). A Vorstand accompanies strategy; a wissenschaftlicher Beirat accompanies the work.
- Shareholder structure — the structurally interesting fact. The
Gesellschafter*innen are ~50 named individuals (current and former
researchers, plus professors at other universities) together with the
Vereinigung für ökologische Wirtschaftsforschung e.V. (VÖW). Among
them: Thomas Korbun, Christian Lautermann, Jonas Pentzien, Patrick
Schöpflin — and Andreas Kraemer, the founder of the Ecologic
Institut. (
/das-ioew/organisation/gesellschafterinnen) - Member of Ecornet (Ecological Research Network), stated on
/das-ioew. - Research fields per
/das-ioew/organisation/forschungsfelder: Unternehmen, Wertschöpfungsketten und Konsum; Umweltökonomie und Umweltpolitik; Nachhaltige Energiewirtschaft und Klimaschutz (the page body renders only these three in the crawled markup — the site’s topic navigation additionally carries Digitaler Wandel, Energiewende, Innovation und Technologien, Klimaschutz und Anpassung, Natur und Ökosysteme, Politik und Governance, Alternative Ökonomien as themes, which are a different axis from the research fields).
2. The null scan — the load-bearing finding
Every one of the 110 profile bodies was scanned in full for SINE’s own vocabulary. Occurrence counts (number of profiles containing the term, case-insensitive, full page body):
| Term | Profiles |
|---|---|
| Datenraum / data space | 0 |
| Gaia-X | 0 |
| Catena-X | 0 |
| Produktpass / product passport / DPP | 0 |
| CSRD | 0 |
| ESRS | 0 |
| Scope 3 | 0 |
| Blockchain | 0 |
| Kryptograf* | 0 |
| Zero-knowledge | 0 |
| Rückverfolg* | 0 |
| Interoperab* | 0 |
| Datensouveränität | 0 |
| Datenökonomie | 0 |
| Datenteilung / data sharing | 0 |
| Vertraulich* | 0 |
| Berichterstattung | 5 — Lautermann, Esther Hoffmann, Manon Filler, Katharina Wagner, Schöpflin |
| Lieferkette | 2 — Lautermann, Kathrin Ankele |
| Ökobilanz | 2 — Hannes Bluhm, Yve Andraos |
| Zertifiz* | 1 — Lautermann |
| Commons | 1 — Pentzien |
| Künstliche Intelligenz | 1 — Rolf Bräuer |
| Industrie 4.0 | 1 — Pentzien |
Reading. The overlap with SINE is thematically broad and technically null. Not one person at the IÖW describes themselves in the vocabulary of data infrastructure. The confidentiality problem that SINE’s whole instrument answers — how a figure becomes believable without the holder disclosing it — does not appear in a single profile, in any wording.
Even “ESRS” and “CSRD” score zero despite the institute running a BMUV-funded ESRS accompaniment project (section 4): the regulation is project vocabulary, not identity vocabulary, at this institute.
The asymmetry in one line: IÖW asks whether and why firms report; SINE asks how a reported figure can be believed without disclosure. The two questions are adjacent on the same object and do not compete.
3. Ranked person-level overlap
Ranked by how close the person’s own stated work sits to something the SINE wiki already has a page for. Three people are materially above the rest; the tail is listed for completeness, not as candidates.
- Patrick Schöpflin — Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter. Schwerpunkte: Nachhaltigkeitsmanagement, Nachhaltigkeitsberichterstattung, Kreislaufwirtschaft. The only person who combines the reporting- standards work with circular-economy material flows.
- Dr. Christian Lautermann — Forschungsfeldleiter. Schwerpunkte: Unternehmensverantwortung und Nachhaltigkeitsmanagement, Nachhaltigkeitsberichterstattung, Sozialunternehmertum, Alternative Wirtschaftsformen. The institute’s reporting-standards anchor.
- Jonas Pentzien — Forschungsfeldleiter. Schwerpunkte: Plattformökonomie, Kooperatives Wirtschaften, Vergleichende Politikfeldanalyse, Konsumpolitik. The only person in the house whose subject matter is governance of digital infrastructure.
- Tail, by single adjacency only: Dr. Esther Hoffmann, Dr. Manon Filler, Katharina Wagner (Berichterstattung); Kathrin Ankele (Lieferkette); Dr. Hannes Bluhm, Yve Andraos (Ökobilanz); Rolf Bräuer (KI). None of these profiles carries a second adjacency, and none was read in depth.
4. The three, read in depth
Sources for this section: each person’s profile page, plus their full
publication and project lists at
/das-ioew/{publikationen,projekte}-von-mitarbeiter/<slug>.
Jonas Pentzien
- Leiter des Forschungsfeldes “Unternehmen, Wertschöpfungsketten und Konsum” (since 01/2024), at the IÖW since 2017, Gesellschafter. M.A. Politikwissenschaft, FU Berlin.
- 2019/20 Fellow at the Institute for the Cooperative Digital Economy, The New School, New York — the Trebor Scholz platform-cooperativism centre. Co-author with Scholz: Policies for Cooperative Ownership in the Digital Economy (2021).
- Since 2022 in the AG “Digitale Geschäftsmodelle in der Industrie 4.0” of Plattform Industrie 4.0 — per his profile, “Expertise an der Schnittstelle Digitalisierung und Nachhaltigkeit”. This is the single closest institutional contact point to SINE’s world found anywhere in the 110 profiles.
- Publication line: The Politics of Platform Cooperativism (2020, USA / Germany / France), Building Platforms Differently: Collective Action and Legitimation Dynamics in the Field of Platform Cooperativism (reviewed journal, 2023), How to grow platform alternatives (fast) (2023), Kooperatives Wirtschaften in der Zivilgesellschaft (book, 2024, with Lautermann), Der Beitrag von Big Data, KI und digitalen Plattformen auf dem Weg zu einer Green Economy (2022, with Petschow and Fraunhofer ISI), Policies to Transform the Internet from Marketplace to Public Space (2021).
- Recent work has moved away from platforms toward biodiversity and consumption: Sufficiency for biodiversity (2025), Towards nature-friendly consumption (2025), EU Deforestation Regulation in action: Towards just and effective implementation (2025, with Julia Fülling). Projects: Konsum naturverträglich gestalten, Bits & Bäume Verstetigung, FoSInKo, Teilgabe, Quincy, Plattformorganisationen in der digitalen Sharing Economy, Digitalisierung und Green Economy.
- The overlap, precisely. Pentzien works on who owns and governs digital platforms — collective ownership, legitimation, policy drivers. SINE works on what a platform must be able to prove without exposing its members. Same object (shared digital infrastructure between firms), orthogonal question (ownership vs. verifiability). He is the one person at the IÖW for whom the SINE Data Commons page would read as familiar territory rather than as a foreign subject — “commons” appears in his profile and nowhere else in the house. ⟨Inference, basis: the publication line plus the null scan.⟩
- Caveat. His publishing centre of gravity in 2025 is deforestation and biodiversity policy, not platform governance. The platform work is 2019–2023.
Dr. Christian Lautermann
- Leiter des Forschungsfeldes “Unternehmen, Wertschöpfungsketten und Konsum” (co-heading the same field as Pentzien; field head since 2022, deputy of the predecessor field “Unternehmensführung und Konsum” 2018–2021). At Uni Oldenburg 2004–2018. Diplom-Ökonom, Dr. 2012, Gesellschafter. Coordinates the institute themes “Unternehmen und Wertschöpfung” and “Alternative Ökonomien”; states “seit über 25 Jahren” in the field.
- Member of the We Care steering committee — a management standard for sustainability requirements at sites and in supply-chain management, food sector.
- Publication line splits in two. (a) Reporting and corporate responsibility: co-author of the 2026 ESRS report; Rebound-Effekte: Management und Vermeidung (2023, with Öko-Institut and Schöpflin); Beyond direct stakeholders: The extensive scope of Societal Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR) (reviewed journal, 2024, with Saskia Dörr); Eine Allianz für CDR bilden (IÖW-Impulse, 2024). (b) Alternative economies: Was ist Alternativwirtschaft? (2026), Die Alternativwirtschaft im Land Bremen (2026), Metanetzwerk für Alternativökonomie (2025), Kooperatives Wirtschaften (2024/2021, with Pentzien).
- Also co-author of the Metastudie “Nachhaltigkeitseffekte der Digitalisierung” (2024, with DIW and Schöpflin) — a critical review of quantitative measurement of digitalisation’s environmental effects.
- The overlap, precisely. Lautermann is the institute’s authority on sustainability reporting as a corporate practice — he co-leads the Ranking der Nachhaltigkeitsberichte (see below). SINE’s concern begins exactly where his ends: he evaluates the quality of what firms publish; SINE’s instrument is for the figures firms will not publish. The Corporate Digital Responsibility strand is the nearer bridge — it is the one place in his work where data itself is the object of responsibility. ⟨Inference, basis: the CDR paper’s framing against SINE’s confidentiality question; the paper itself was not read.⟩
Patrick Schöpflin
- Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter since 11/2018 in the same research field, Gesellschafter*in. M.Sc. Nachhaltiges Wirtschaften, Kassel. Leads projects himself; his profile states he “setzt sich für bessere europäische Standards in der Nachhaltigkeitsberichterstattung ein”. Works mainly with qualitative methods (interviews, workshops).
- First author of the 2026 ESRS report Weiterentwicklung europäischer Nachhaltigkeitsberichtsstandards für Unternehmen (with Heinrich, Lautermann et al.), and sole author of Umweltberichterstattung von Unternehmen: Vereinbarkeit von Sorgfaltspflichtgesetzen und den Europäischen Standards für die Nachhaltigkeitsberichterstattung (ESRS) (2024). Of the three, he is the one actually inside the ESRS text.
- Current projects: Nature Credits (tradable biodiversity certificates — “quantitativ messbare und nachweisbare Einheit”), Ökonomische Instrumente für naturverträgliches Wirtschaften, ÜBER-AUS (textile post-industrial waste circularity, IÖW coordinates, BMFTR “Zirkuläre Textilien”; the project description names Tracking of residual material streams), REPAID (reusable packaging in gastronomy, incl. “Möglichkeiten der Digitalisierung”), GiBBS (biodiversity management in the building-materials industry), BREsilient II.
- Earlier: Kreislaufwirtschaft: Verzaubernde Perspektiven oder ein Mythos? (2023, with Rubik), Rebound-Effekte (2023), the Mehrweg brochures (2024), Bremer Unternehmen im Klimawandel (2022, with Esther Hoffmann).
- The overlap, precisely. Two contact points, both sharper than
anything else found:
- ESRS. He works on the content of the standard — which environmental topics must be in it, whether it is consistent with supply-chain due-diligence law. SINE works on how a reported number is made credible. Two halves of the same regulatory object, and neither side currently holds the other’s half.
- Nature Credits. A certificate asserting a “quantitatively
measurable and verifiable unit” of biodiversity benefit is, formally,
the same class of problem as a verified carbon claim — a claim about a
private party that a market must trust. ⟨Inference, basis: the project
description’s own wording; the wiki’s
coordination-vs-bargaining-failurepage predicts a bargaining component wherever such a claim is traded. The project outputs were not read.⟩
- ⟨Inference: of the three, Schöpflin is the operationally closest contact — he is the one doing the standard-text work rather than heading a field.⟩
The shared artefacts
- ESRS accompaniment project (
Weiterentwicklung europäischer Nachhaltigkeitsberichtsstandards für Unternehmen): Schöpflin (first author) + Lautermann. Goal per the project page — scientific accompaniment of the EU standard-development process with an environmental focus; systematic derivation of material environmental impacts per sector; analysis of whether the cross-cutting standards are compatible with supply-chain due-diligence reporting duties and selected environmental law; gaps and inconsistencies; two company case studies; ad-hoc workshops and short analyses. Report published 2026. - Ranking der Nachhaltigkeitsberichte — IÖW × future e.V., running since 1994, 11th round. Team includes Lautermann, Esther Hoffmann, Vivian Frick, Schöpflin, Thomas Korbun. ⟨Note: the ranking’s own pages were not crawled in depth; the team composition is from the IÖW profile pages.⟩
- Metastudie “Nachhaltigkeitseffekte der Digitalisierung” (2024): Lautermann + Schöpflin, with DIW.
- Kooperatives Wirtschaften in der Zivilgesellschaft (2024): Lautermann + Pentzien.
5. Limits of this note
- Nothing from IÖW’s own publications was read. All publication claims above are from title/author/year list entries, not from the documents. Any claim about what a publication argues is marked as inference.
- The headcount, founding year and shareholder list are from the IÖW’s own self-description, not from the annual report or the commercial register. Verify before external use.
- The 110 profiles vs. 69 staff gap is unresolved — see section 1.
- Legal form, turnover, funding mix and office locations were not
established; the pages that would carry them (
/impressum,/forschung) returned 404 under the crawled URL shapes. - The research-field list in section 1 is incomplete as rendered; only three of the fields’ descriptions came through the crawled markup.
- The tail in section 3 was identified by keyword adjacency only and not read.