Litmus Test of Germanys Innovative Strength
Germany is currently experiencing an economic drought - however, efforts in research and education cannot be allowed to suffer as a result of this. This is the demand of the latest report on Germanys technological performance that was issued under the management of the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The report for the year 2002 was presented at a federal press conference in Berlin by the coordinator of the study, Prof. Hariolf Grupp (Fraunhofer ISI), together with Dr. Harald Legler from the Lower Saxony Institute for Economic Research, and subsequently presented to Minister Edelgard Bulmahn. In his speech at the federal press conference, Grupp spoke about a litmus test: on the one hand the technological capability of the German economy is still high, but there are cracks in the foundation. Above all, through the slump in the information and communication technologies, Germanys efforts to catch up in the advanced technologies had started to flag two years ago. Moreover, small and medium-sized companies had, above all, not profited from this development. The report criticizes that the investments in research and development cyclically follow the budgetary situation. It is true that public institutions and private industry once again spent 2.5 per cent of the gross domestic product on research and development last year, but Germany is still far from the goal that it set itself of raising this mark up to three per cent within the EU by 2010. Furthermore, the character of research has changed: the universities suffer from lack of funds (i.e. specifically those institutions that make an important contribution to basic research in Germany). At the same time, industry conducts almost only applied research, whereas the stimuli for innovation come from the foreign markets. Hariolf Grupp warns, "Direct damage has not yet arisen, but without new knowledge from research, the German economy will, in the medium-term, fall behind internationally." Grupp therefore demands an anti-cyclical research policy, especially in times of economic difficulty: "Policy should send a signal," he said at the federal press conference. The additional billions for education were such a positive signal. Comparable efforts in the area of research would now have to follow this one.,The Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI complements the techno-scientific spectrum of the Fraunhofer Society with economic and societal aspects, analyzing technological developments, their market potentials and their impacts on economy, state and society. The Institutes interdisciplinary teams focus their work especially on the fields of energy, environment, production, communication and biotechnology, as well as regional research and research policy.
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