Research A Billion Euro Business
Globalisiation leaves traces in research and development: increasingly, German enterprises are no longer developing new technologies themselves, but commissioning external service providers to do so and more and more frequently abroad. The Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI, Karlsruhe, together with the ifo institute, Munich, and the Donors' Association for the Advancement of Science, Essen, came to this conclusion. Of the round six billion euro which the German manufacturing industry paid to external researchers and developers in the year 2000, more than one billion euro flowed abroad. However, this money usually remains in the family: more than half of the research and development tasks are performed abroad by companies affiliated with the German mother company. The total market for research and development services in Germany amounted to over 11 billion euro in the year 2000. After manufacturing industry, service companies are the second largest customers commissioning research and development work (2.7 billion euro), followed by foreign companies (1.5 billion euro). Last of all is the state with 1.2 billion euro. Private service providers and non-university research institutions such as the Fraunhofer or Helmholtz Society dominate among the contractors. In the year 2000, they achieved a turnover in excess of 5 billion euro. Industrial enterprises took second place (3.7 billion euro), followed by foreign companies (1.9 billion euro) and the universities (0.8 billion euro). Ever shorter innovation cycles, outsourcing and corporate concentrations encourage the trend towards awarding R&D contracts to other enterprises and research institutions at home and abroad. The automobile industry is the pioneer, spending 22.4 percent of the expenditure for research and development on external service providers, and the chemical industry with 15 percent. Mechanical engineering and the electrotechnical industry bring up the rear with approx. 7 percent. But not all enterprises are convinced of the advantages of the technological division of labour, states Project Manager Knut Koschatzky from Fraunhofer-ISI. In large industrial companies, the number of voices warning against undermining technological competitiveness is increasing. The reason is the fear of losing competences and resources to external suppliers. According to Koschatzky, several technology-intensive firms are already fetching competences back to their own enterprises. Details on the structure and perspectives of this growth market are summed up in a 214 page book entitled Forschungs- und Entwicklungsdienstleistungen in Deutschland (only available in German). It is published in Fraunhofer IRB Verlag (ISBN 3-8167-6254-9) and can be obtained from bookshops or Fraunhofer-ISI directly.,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.
Countries
Germany