South of Germany once again taking out most patents 17. February 2007 by Thomas Jannot Yesterday the German patent and brand office (DPMA) in Munich published the »Patentatlas 2006«. This document informs about how innovative the several regions of Germany were in the period from 2000 to 2005. In this context applications for patents were classified into patents applied for at regional and district levels, their technical background as well …
Europe´s economy growing stronger than expected 17. February 2007 by Thomas Jannot The EU Commission yesterday corrected its forecast on economic growth for the EU and the Eurozone. Whereas in autumn 2006 economic growth forecasts were 2.4% (EU) and 2.1% (Eurozone), the latest figures indicate 2.7% for the EU and 2.4% for the Eurozone. According to the Commission, the year 2006 was a remarkable one in which …
Economic growth in Germany forecast to be even stronger than expected 17. February 2007 by Thomas Jannot The Federal Association of German Chambers of Commerce and Industry (DIHK) has just corrected its growth forcast for 2007 from 1,5% to 2.3%. The new forecast is based on a recent survey from February. After a short period of slowing down at the beginning of 2007, economic growth in 2007 has in the meantime almost …
Linux increasingly interesting to SMEs 17. February 2007 by Thomas Jannot According to the »Open Source in Global Software: Market, Impact, Disruption and Business Models« study by the IDC, 54% of companies, organizations and institutions questioned in this study use open source software (OSS) as operating systems including Linux. This is a clear sign for this alternative software being attractive from an economic point of view, …
Email marketing important for your business success 17. February 2007 by Thomas Jannot The marketing tool of emailing provides three unrivalled advantages. Firstly, no other medium reaches addressees so uncomplicatedly, leads them so rapidly from advertising to buying and makes them acquainted with a company and its products. Secondly, emails are most cost efficient. Thirdly, emails may be generated electronically directly from a database of customers. However, there …
Many companies open to private equity 14. February 2007 by Thomas Jannot About 25% of all German companies are open to the idea of raising private equity capital. This is the finding of the Unternehmensbarometer survey by the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce (DIHK). In particular company founders and newly founded companies are often denied bank loans. »Therefore, a remarkable 35% of these consider …
Growing optimism thanks to economic upswing 14. February 2007 by Thomas Jannot According to the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) the belief in a growing German economy is becoming stronger in February 2007. After –3.6 point in January the corresponding economic indicator rose by 6.5 points to currently +2.9 points which signals that the German economy will continue recovering in the second half of this year. …
GDP higher than expected 13. February 2007 by Thomas Jannot Today the Federal Statistical Office published a cheerful message: Adjusted for price and season the German gross domestic product increased by another 0.9% in the fourth quarter of 2006 as compared to the previous quarter. GDP measures the value of goods and services generated by a national economy. Another surprise came in the form of …
Workers´s councils inflate labour costs 13. February 2007 by Thomas Jannot According to a new study by the Mannheim-based Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) companies with a workers´council pay substantially higher wages than companies without it. A comparison between companies being similar as regards line of business, company size etc. shows that the wage difference is about 10%. Furthermore, in companies with workers´ council the …
IT security in SMEs criticised 13. February 2007 by Thomas Jannot In the context of the current discussion about industrial espionage the German Association of Information Management, Telecommunication and New Media (BITKOM) laments a lack of a thought-out IT security strategy in most small and medium-sized entities (SMEs). Even though many entrepreneurs consider their business secrets to be safe, current reports on foreign hackers attacking German …