The federal government has set its own goals for the year 2025.
(Photo: IMAGO/Westend61)
Berlin The federal government is reorganizing its innovation funding. This is shown by the new “future strategy for research and innovation”, which replaces the old “high-tech strategy”. The draft of the Federal Ministry of Research is available to the Handelsblatt. What is new is that the traffic light sets concrete goals that it wants to achieve by 2025.
“With the strategy for the future, we are creating a cross-departmental foundation to pool our efforts and resources as the federal government and to focus them on the major challenges,” said Federal Research Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (FDP) to the Handelsblatt.
“Rarely before has so much had to be managed and shaped at the same time,” said the minister in reference to the current crises and challenges. Research and innovation are essential for this tour de force. “It is particularly important to me that we bring more innovations into application, take a broad approach with an open mind to technology and defend or achieve technology leadership, especially in key technologies.”
The most important goal of the strategy is to increase total spending on research and development to 3.5 percent of GDP in 2025. Most recently in 2020 it was 3.13 percent.
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Although this goal is already in the coalition agreement, it has become more ambitious as a result of the war and the economic downturn. Because the economy, which bears two-thirds of this expenditure, is currently saving on innovation expenditure. Previous German governments had also failed to reach the target of three percent, even in good years.
The proportion of academics should increase
In order to enable innovation to fly high despite the crisis, the strategy defines various sub-goals: For example, it should be possible to found a company within 24 hours in 2025 – according to World Bank data, in 2020 it was eight days.
>> Read more: Many patents, few products – Germany’s barriers to innovation
The Minister of Education also promises more top staff: the proportion of academics, technicians and business administrators among 30 to 34 year olds is to increase from 50.5 to 52.5 percent.
The other ministries that received the draft of the future strategy yesterday are now to formulate further specific goals. The strategy should be ready for the cabinet in January.
For example, there should be a target for the share of venture capital in GDP. Venture capital is a particularly scarce resource in Germany.
More women for research
In addition, the proportion of company start-ups in the high-tech sector is expected to increase, which was 3.6 percent most recently. Universities should also enable far more than 244 spin-offs a year.
Bettina Stark-Watzinger wants to announce the “Future Strategy Research and Innovation”.
(Photo: IMAGO/Metodi Popov)
The lion’s share of innovations has so far come from large companies, but in the future more medium-sized companies will also participate. When it comes to start-ups, the government relies on women.
In the future, their share of start-ups should be more than just one tenth. At universities, more than a quarter of professorships are to be held by women.
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In terms of content, the future strategy defines six fields on which the state should concentrate. At the top is the goal of “resource-efficient and competitive industry and sustainable mobility”.
A possible task here would be research into possible uses of hydrogen for transport and heat generation. In the long term, fusion research could also provide clean energy, writes the ministry.
Innovations against epidemics
The new 6G network should not only advance digitalization, but also decouple power consumption from data volume. The chapter “Climate Protection and Biodiversity”, for example, lists new water infrastructure adapted to climate change and “efficient water reuse” as goals.
The 6G network is intended to advance digitization in Germany.
(Photo: imago images/Michael Gstettenbauer)
Enormous hopes also rest on health research. Not only should the fight against widespread diseases and epidemics be stepped up here, but the interactions between the environment and health should also be better researched.
The university hospitals should help to finally establish a data infrastructure that brings health data together nationally. The fourth major goal is to secure technological sovereignty and use the enormous potential of digitization.
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