According to the Innovation Survey for Germany by the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), the innovation budget in Germany increased by 3.7% to more than 140 billion euros in 2013. This peak is expected to be surpassed by a further 3% in 2014.
The overall figures cover a concentration of individual industries, a third of which are attributable to the vehicle industry, another third of which are equally distributed across the pharmaceutical/chemical, electrical and machine industries.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) invest considerably less than large companies in relation to their turnover, and although budgets for research, IP rights and marketing have risen steadily and significantly since 2009, the innovation rate (an indicator for the introduction of products and process innovations), has decreased within this same period.