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by sofixa 1055 days ago
I gave one example - music streaming companies because I find it funny practically all of the dedicated ones are from the EU - and you interpret it as something to scoff at? Spotify is literally the biggest music and podcast streaming company, and among the first in the business.

Back Market, Doctolib, Ornikar, HelloFresh, GitPod, N26, Yubikey, Revolut have plenty of impact and innovation as startups.

But maybe market cap is what impact means for you, so okay - Airbus? VW? Stellantis? Alstom? Thales? Safran? Sanofi? Siemens? Robert Bosch? Bayer? Literally among the best in the world in their respective branches. For instance, Airbus is outselling and outengineering and outinnovating and outmarketing and out-everything Boeing. Did you know that apart from them not being criminally negligent with basic safety systems, they're also heavily investing in all sorts of alternatives for the future of aviation? They have projects for battery-electric and hydrogen-powered airplanes, delta-wing designs, and collaborate with engine manufacturers (to be fair, it's a French-American Joint Venture) on innovative engine designs. Meanwhile Boeing's only innovation is NASA giving them a ton of money for them to test a new wing design for them.

Only some big names I could think of in France and Germany (and Spain and Netherlands and UK for Airbus). I really should start a list that I keep up for next time this topic comes up, people regularly underestimate innovation in the EU, or are completely unaware that said innovative company is European.

2 comments

Almost all the big companies you mentioned were founded 50+ years ago. When it comes to tech, yeah you can cite Spotify, but against the US big techs it's kind of cute that this is the EU's calling card. Ornikar? GitPod? Please. For each of those we could list 100, if not 1000 more successful American startups.

It's a cold, hard fact that the US has had much more successful businesses recently, particularly in tech.

So innovation only counts if it's in tech and is a recently founded company? Agree to disagree on the definition then.

The innovation Airbus is doing is a million times more important (because it can drastically reduce carbon emissions in an area that emits a lot of them and is crucial for a big part of the world) than 99% of US tech startups "reinvention" or "disrupting" common things nobody needs reinventing. Do you count Juicero in your "innovative tech" metrics?

Yeah, hotels sucked in some places, but Airbnb is not a solution but it's whole can of worms aggravating housing shortages.

>Back Market, Doctolib, Ornikar, HelloFresh, GitPod, N26, Yubikey, Revolut have plenty of impact and innovation as startups.

lol. I have heard of like two of these and even those are tiny companies.