OECD Reviews of Innovation Policy: Germany 2022
Building Agility for Successful Transitions
The COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine war have revealed vulnerabilities in Germany’s economic model: undiversified energy supply, an over-reliance on fossil fuels, delayed digitalisation and disruptable supply chains. Digital technologies may significantly disrupt manufacturing industries Germany has dominated for decades, threatening future competitiveness. The green transition also requires significant industrial transformations. Germany can call upon one of the world’s most advanced innovation systems in dealing with these challenges, but a new more agile and experimental approach to STI policy is needed. This Review outlines how to develop such an approach and what STI policies need to focus on: create markets for future innovations, more significant and more risk-tolerant finance for innovation, inter-disciplinary knowledge exchange, improved data infrastructure and capabilities. Given the internationally shared challenges of dealing with transitions, the insights presented in the review will be of interest to policymakers, stakeholders and analysts from Germany and across the OECD.
Also available in: German
German business sector innovation for the green transition: Performance, challenges and opportunities
The twin transitions – green and digital – have created new challenges and opportunities for Germany’s highly innovative business sector. Germany has a range of innovative competencies in many technology areas necessary for success in the transitional context, but future global leadership requires sustained investments. This section begins by benchmarking the capacities and performance of the German business sector for innovation in the context of the sustainability transition. It examines the automotive sector as an example of the challenges and opportunities involved in industrial innovation and transformation to this aim. It then introduces some key policy programmes that support innovative capacities in key enabling technologies. It concludes with a brief discussion on the role of public procurement as a demand-side instrument to spur innovation in key technologies and their diffusion to achieve the twin transitions.
Also available in: German
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