Maintaining the innovation capabilities of firms, employees and institutions is a key component for the generation of sustainable growth, employment, and high income in industrial societies. Gaining insights into the German innovation system and the institutional framework is as important to policy making as is data on the endowment of the German economy with factors fostering innovation and their recent development. Germany's Federal Ministry of Education and Research has repeatedly commissioned reports on the competitive strength of the German innovation system since the mid-eighties. The considerable attention that the public and the political, administrative and economic actors have paid to these reports in the past few years proves the strong interest in the assessment of and indicators for the dynamics behind innovation activities. The present study closely follows the pattern of those carried out before. It has been extended, however, to include an extensive discussion on indicators for technological performance and an outline of the key features of the German innovation system.

The research results presented in this book are part of the continuous reporting on the technological performance of the German economy. The indicators of technological performance show a high efficiency of the German innovation system in the short term. New knowledge is rapidly transferred into patents, innovative activities are growing independently of the business cycle, and German enterprises are well established on international markets. With respect to the medium and longer term, however, the expansion of the R&D-intensive sectors, R&D activities in general and start-ups do not seem to be strong enough, and the service sector lacks prominent features in international comparison. While there are potentials, they are not sufficiently being mobilised. The strength of the German innovation system lies in advanced technologies. But Germany is also the technological leader in some areas. Being a "fast follower" by quickly integrating new technologies in innovative products and processes should prove a successful strategy. Innovation policy should promote solutions in all parts of the economy and society.

In addition to reviewing recent trends, this report identifies significant changes in science, technology and industry policies in the OECD countries.

People often associate postwar Germany with technology and with its products of mass consumption, such as luxury cars. Even pop music, most notably Kraftwerk (literally 'power station') with songs such as Autobahn, Radioactivity or We are the Robots, disseminates the stereotype of a close link between German culture and technology. Technology in Modern German History explores various forms of technology in 200 years of German history and explains how technology has been fundamental to the shaping of modern Germany. The book investigates the role technology played in transforming Germany's culture, society and politics during the 19th and 20th centuries. Key topics covered include the different stages of industrialization, the growth of networked cities, and the triumph of a teleological narrative of technology as progress. Moreover, it provides a critical revision of the history of high technology which reveals how high-tech euphoria determined certain paths in history regardless of whether the respective technology proved to be successful. In its second part, the volume introduces new avenues in scholarship. Karsten Uhl examines neglected areas, such as rural technologies or the often-overlooked importance of everyday technologies: How did consumers or workers use new technologies? How did they appropriate and modify them? Lastly, the book considers the final decades of the 20th century and asks if they provided a significant new quality of technological change: To what degree and effects did computerization transform professional and private life in Germany? In culture and politics, reinforced by the German variety of environmentalism, the idea of progress was challenged, as the once prevailing vision of progress gave way to new apprehensions of uncertainty evident to this day. Technology in Modern German History brings fascinating insight into a much neglected area of German history for students and scholars alike.