Germany Dominates the USA in Innovation so Germany keeps a trained middle class with manufacturing jobs

The truth is: Germany wins the global innovation race hands down over China and the USA.

Germany does a better job on innovation in areas as diverse as sustainable energy systems, molecular biotech, lasers, and experimental software engineering. Indeed, as part of an effort to learn from Germany about effective innovation, U.S. states have encouraged the Fraunhofer Society, a German applied-science think tank, to set up no fewer than seven institutes in America.

True, Americans do well at inventing. The U.S. has the world’s most sophisticated system of financing radical ideas, and the results have been impressive, from Google to Facebook to Twitter. But the fairy tale that the U.S. is better at radical innovation than other countries has been shown in repeated studies to be untrue. Germany is just as good as the U.S. in the most radical technologies.

What’s more important, Germany is better at adapting inventions to industry and spreading them throughout the business sector. Much German innovation involves infusing old products and processes with new ideas and capabilities or recombining elements of old, stagnant sectors into new, vibrant ones.

Germany’s style of innovation explains its manufacturing prowess. For example, many, if not most, of the Chinese products we buy every day are produced by German-made machinery, and the companies that make them are thriving.

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