The Federal State of Baden-Württemberg
Baden-Württemberg (BW) is the third largest of the 16 German Federal States with an area of 35,752 square kilometres and 10.7 million inhabitants. Located in the centre of Europe, BW shares borders to the West with France, to the South with Switzerland and, across Lake Constance, with Austria. With its high per capita income and strong industrial base, Baden-Württemberg has a higher GDP than most of the EU Member States. BW has a dense network of key industries, including both big global players and a high number of SMEs. In addition to a large number of universities and research organisations, Baden-Württemberg has very good incubator structures and networks, efficient technology transfer mechanisms and an pro-active research and technology policy.
A number of internationally renowned companies, such as DaimlerChrysler, Bosch, Porsche, Trumpf, Hugo Boss, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen, SAP and Zeiss, are based in Baden-Württemberg. Many large international companies, including IBM, Hewlett Packard, ABB and Citizen, and numerous smaller enterprises benefit from the Land's excellent infrastructure. Mechanical and electrical engineering and vehicle construction, the dominant industries in the region, are being complemented by new industries such as environmental engineering, microsystem technology, healthcare and biotechnology.
Baden-Württemberg is one of the European regions with the highest number of Higher Education and Research Institutions, supplemented by a broad range of transfer institutes and thus resulting in most intensive research activities. It has a sophisticated and highly developed research infrastructure where basic and application-oriented research is equally represented. It comes to no surprise, therefore, that the local and multi-national enterprises established there avail of this supply, and spend approximately 9.5 billion EUR per year on RTDI. This represents close to 80 % of the GERD in Baden-Württemberg of approx. 12 billion EUR, a hefty 3.9 % of its GDP and far beyond the Barcelona Target of 3 %. As a result, 100.000 people are employed in RTDI (16 % of them in universities) and 130 patents per 100.000 inhabitants are registered annually.