Abstract
Megatrends as globalization, individualization and digitization lead to ongoing challenges for enterprises. Due to their limited resources, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are particularly challenged by shorter time-to-market and the increasing complexity of digitalized products. To overcome these limits, many SMEs cooperate with research institutes. Still, there is a lack of understanding different types of SMEs, their needs in the development process, how to approach them and how to establish a potential partnership. Thus, research institutes' service portfolio and cooperation approach do not always meet the demand. The concept of Personas is used to cluster types of SMEs and describes their characteristics in the development process and their expectations when collaborating with research institutes.