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by zeit_geist 4630 days ago
> Germany, despite being technologically strong, is not very inovative. At least not in the sense of new, scaling products.

That's the result of a tech-centric worldview (read startups, sw). Quite the opposite is true, for instance in the area of 'Green Tech'.

> While that indeed is one of the cornerstones of the german economy, these companies are most of the time too small for an interessting tech IPO.

I don't your argument here. You mean success == IPO here? There are plenty of highly profitable Mittelstand companies with a profit and revenue much higher than e.g. LinkedIn. What does that mean here, that LinkedIn is unsuccessful or that the other Mittelstand'ish company is? IPO is not a value of its own as some reports might indicate. Looking at Mittelstand, as the author wants us to, is about the values surrounding a company, for instance to re-invest money in a sustainable way, that it is not about growth for growth's sake (which seems to be an inevitable by-product of going public!) but making better products.

> Finally, what in my opinion makes it very unlikely that a company has a sucessfull tech IPO in germany anytime soon is people. There's education, focusing on producing people for the existing technologies and, even worse, companies.

For University-level education, this definitely and absolutely does not apply.
1 comments
hef19898 4630 days ago
Actually, I mean IPO. Not in the case of success, but general success wasn't the question. Beyond that, I agree with you here, both linked in and german mittelstand companies are successfull in their own right. Yet, they are very different.

Green Tech is en vogue right now in germany, yes. But after what happened to the solar industry and is currently happening to the wind power industry leaves me a little bit sceptical. But I have an opinion all of my own on all of the green tech stuff which I'm pretty sure is very different to yours.

Having studied in Germany, I disagree with you regarding education. My experience was that trying out new things, experiment and question the status-quo is not actually encouraged. Sometimes quite the opposite. In Germany, a lot of effort is spent on improving exiting technology, which is, again, one of the key strength. But as strengths go it can be really weakness in a different context. And when it comes to disrupt things (which start-ups should do) this attitude becomes quite a handicap.

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