Sector Reports on Innovation for 2016 Published

The key industries in Germany are planning to increase their investment in innovation in 2017 even more than in 2015. This is the case for the chemical and pharmaceutical industry, the mechanical engineering sector, the electrical industry and the automotive industry, as well as the IT and telecommunications sector.

By contrast, companies in other sectors, such as financial service providers and business services, are planning to reduce their innovation budgets in the short term. Other innovation indicators revealed similar sector-specific results for example, in terms of businesses' innovation success, i.e. a company’s ability to launch innovative products or to save costs through process innovations. These are some of the findings of the newly published Sector Reports on Innovation, which provide a detailed breakdown of several innovation indicators recorded in the individual sectors in the German economy. The Sector Reports on Innovation summarize important findings from the 2016 German Innovation Survey in 21 different branches of the economy. Since 1993, the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) has conducted an annual survey on innovation activity in the German economy. The German Innovation Survey is conducted on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.