The institutional foundation of innovativeness and competitiveness of two German industries: biotechnology and mechanical engineering compared

摘要

The article analyzes the institutional foundation of the innovativeness and competitiveness of two German industrial sectors, mechanical engineering and biotechnology. It applies a systemic innovation approach to identify what changes at the national and regional levels can explain why mechanical engineering has kept a competitive advantage for many decades while we can observe a dynamic catching-up process in biotechnology. Both sectors provide good examples of the reconfigurations that take place in national innovation systems in both territorial and functional terms.