March 28, 2004
AH, THE GLORY OF SECULAR EUROPE:
Wanted in Germany: a few good risk-takers: Germany now seeks to counter a culture that stymies innovation. (Andreas Tzortzis, 3/29/04, CS Monitor)
Last month, a group of companies headed by DaimlerChrysler and Deutsche Telekom conceded that they could not produce a high-tech toll-collection system in time to meet government deadlines. The government canceled the contract, sparking a national debate on the decline of the "Made in Germany" standard."Can't we do anything anymore in Germany?" read a headline in Bild, the country's widest-circulating tabloid.
Once Europe's economic powerhouse, Germany is facing an identity crisis as it reforms structures that steered its postwar economic miracle.
Analysts say Germany's welfare programs have made its workforce too costly, scaring away both foreign and German firms. The German economy, the largest in Europe, shrank by 0.1 percent last year. Researchers and academics quickly list two reasons Germany is falling behind in the global economy: Years of declining investment in research and development by both the government and private firms, and an overall aversion to risk.
"We're finding the interest in licensing new research comes from foreign companies ... even though we ask German companies first," says Ulrich Schmoch of the Fraunhofer Society, a think-tank network that develops new technology for companies and the government. "There's a whole culture that's behind it."
The Democrats want to make us more like them. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 28, 2004 8:48 PM
In business school 7 years ago, we visited with a handful of French and German firms, including L'Oreal, Elf, Mercedes, Hoechst , and the Bundesbank, and everyone we met with said the same thing - we won't hire in Europe, to grow, we'll expand somewhere else. It was just too expensive to hire in Europe. The only ones for whom this was a problem was Mercedes, as the Chinese and Indians thought the Mercedes' built in Germany were better than the ones built in-country...
Posted by: Bill at March 28, 2004 9:25 PMI guess we're all nostalgiac about the good old days of German ingenuity and efficiency....
Posted by: Barry Meislin at March 29, 2004 2:12 AMWell, I've owned a couple of Freightliners, (which is a DaimlerChrysler subsidiary), and I'll only buy those made in Portland, Oregon, not in Mexico.
As much as I'd love to be able to say that Mexicans can manufacture, (or at least assemble), to first-world standards, in at least this case they cannot.
So maybe the Indians and Chinese are right.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at March 29, 2004 2:14 AMI've also had a good view of the Made
in Germany label (Although I think Swiss manufactured goods are probably the best in Europe. Most other European manufactures are quite
poor).
Germany is asking very similar questions to what we need to be asking.
If any idea developed in the U.S.A. in a corporation by a doctoral candidate from Red China, is it a "made in America" idea??? At least
Werner Von Braun was no longer a threat when he
came over.