Challenging Silicon Valley in the R&D marathon

Baden-W?ºrttemberg enjoys a worldwide reputation for quality manufacturing, but it must be open to change to retain its status. Klaus Haasis, Managing director of MFG Baden-W?ºrttemberg, says combining ICT and the applications industry is the key to promoting regional innovation.

 Baden-Württemberg has long been home to car manufacturers and engineers of worldwide repute. Global companies like Bosch, Daimler and Porsche have their base in Germany’s southwest, but the region also benefits from the large number of small and medium-sized enterprises in the area. These companies contribute a large proportion of the sector’s total annual turnover of €61.5 bn Euro. What’s particularly striking is the sector’s annual growth rate of approximately 7 per cent between 1994 and 2005, a figure which looks even more impressive when set against the less than 2 per cent total annual growth rates for all sectors.

Southwest Germany has produced many of history’s finest scientists and societal innovators. Baden-Württemberg was the birthplace of Carl Benz, Gottlieb Daimler, Max Weber, Count Zeppelin and Albert Einstein. Today, the entire regional economy benefits from the well-developed research landscape that is the legacy of these scientific pioneers. Baden-Württemberg is home to world-renowned universities including Heidelberg and Tübingen, as well as a high density of research institutes like the Fraunhofer and Max Planck institutes. With such a history and infrastructure behind it the region would seem to be well placed to build on its reputation as a global centre of research and innovation.

It is clear that southwest Germany is well on the way to developing a knowledge-based economy. However, challenges still remain. If the current high growth rate is to be sustained in the future it is vital to support the economic pioneers, the people who are exploring the technological frontiers through advances in knowledge and technology. In fact, many of these pioneers are finding that the borders between ICT and other sectors are vanishing.

“The biggest challenge from our point of view is combining the IT sector with the application industries. The future lies in software-based products, which was demonstrated convincingly in the Dagstuhl manifesto on software engineering,” states Klaus Haasis, Managing Director of MFG Baden-Württemberg mbH, Baden-Württemberg’s Innovation Agency for IT and Media. Baden-Württemberg’s capacity for innovation and openness to change reinforce our optimism that the area can not only maintain the regions reputation but actively build upon it.

Published: Monday, 9th November 2009