Germany

Leo Dana

Chapter 8 in Entrepreneurship in Western Europe:A Contextual Perspective, 2017, pp 137-166 from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

Abstract: This chapter consists of sections on Introduction, Historical Overview, The Environment for Entrepreneurship and Toward the Future. Introduction, as follows:The Federal Republic of Germany (formerly also known as West Germany) covers 356,978 square kilometres, neighbouring Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, and Switzerland. An important German inventor/entrepreneur was Johannes Gutenberg (circa 1395–1468), the first printer/publisher in Europe to use moveable type. Examples of science-based entrepreneurs include Carl Zeiss (1816–1888), Otto Schott (1851–1935), and Ernst Abbe (1840–1905), who together pioneered modern optics. Other famous German entrepreneurs include Friedrich Engelhorn (1821–1902) founder of BASF, Gottlieb Daimler (1834–1900) who in 1885 patented one of the first successful internal-combustion engines, and Karl Friedrich Benz (1844–1929) who in 1886 received the first patent for a petrol-fuelled car. Adolf Dassler (1900–1978) created Adidas; his brother Rudolf Dassler (1896–1974) launched Puma. More recently, Berlin has become Europe’s most vibrant centre for venture capital. Berlin and Munich both have important clusters with many high-tech start-ups. Germany is a champion at exporting, and many of its producers are SMEs from the Mittelstand — including family enterprises. There is an important interplay, here, between heavy industry and the development of SMEs. The automotive industry, for example, is a platform for supplying and supporting SMEs; simultaneously, this fosters their internationalisation…

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Policy; Europe; Small Business; Self-Employment; Economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9781783267941_0008 (application/pdf)
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9781783267941_0008 (text/html)
Ebook Access is available upon purchase.

Related works:
Chapter: Germany (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wsi:wschap:9781783267941_0008

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in World Scientific Book Chapters from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().