The US concentrates way too much on the consumer side of innovation, whereas Germany seeks to improve and optimize the whole cycle of its manufacturing, without necessarily aiming to put something on the shelves immediately. This makes Germany a much more predictable and less volatile economy.
You may just see the consumer innovation and not the industrial innovation. I invest primarily in B2B companies, and I think the US innovates more in this sector than any other country.
If you're just thinking of incremental/internal innovation, then Germany may or may not be better than the US, but there's no widely accepted way of measuring this so any opinion is purely anecdotal.
I'm always amazed at how little understanding there seems to be about the vast nature of American manufacturing (nearly $2.5 trillion in size, it's larger than the entire UK economy by itself). Its death has been greatly exaggerated. What has happened, is due to massive gains in productivity the labor force has been reduced heavily. More manufacturing jobs have been lost to productivity gains than to China, seemingly a little known fact.
Why would "seeks to improve and optimize the whole cycle of its manufacturing" correspond to "more predictable economy"? Wouldn't "improving and optimizing the whole of manufacturing" cause even more disruptions?
(I'm not arguing against creative disruption. I'm wondering how to square the two concepts.)
Because, at the end, all that brings gradually better products of real value, instead of just trying out completely different ideas which are destined to be the "next big thing" in a chaotic manner, which is what happens to a large extent in the US.
