I recently came across this article and pulled the bullets below. Most interesting is the last line in bullet 3. It is a topic that I often spin scenarios around and though I would “Press This” to my readers. As an American living in Munich I am often asked why I chose to live here. This article highlights some of the reasons. The Alps being one of the other ones.
Enjoy. The full link to the article is below.
Three factors are at work here:
- Germany understands that innovation must result in productivity gains that are widespread, rather than concentrated in the high-tech sector of the moment. As a consequence, Germany doesn’t only seek to form new industries, it also infuses its existing industries with new ideas and technologies. For example, look at how much of a new BMW is based on innovation in information and communication technologies, and how many of the best German software programmers go to work for Mercedes-Benz. The U.S., by contrast, lets old industries die instead of renewing them with new technologies and innovation. As a result, we don’t have healthy cohesive industries; we have isolated silos. An American PhD student in computer science never even thinks about a career in the automobile industry — or, for that matter, other manufacturing-related fields.
- Germany has a network of public institutions that help companies recombine and improve ideas. In other words, innovation doesn’t end with invention. The Fraunhofer Institutes, partially supported by the government, move radical ideas into the marketplace in novel ways. They close the gap between research and the daily grind of small and medium-size enterprises. Bell Labs used to do this in the United States for telecommunications, but Fraunhofer now does this on a much larger scale across Germany’s entire industrial sector.
- Germany’s workforce is constantly trained, enabling it to use the most radical innovations in the most diverse and creative ways to produce and improve products and services that customers want to buy for higher prices. If you were to fill your kitchen and garage with the best products that your budget could afford, how much of this space would be filled with German products such as Miele, Bosch, BMW, and Audi?
Why Germany Dominates the U.S. in Innovation – HBR.
MAY 27, 2014