major improvements in innovation have to take place to equalise these regional
differences in efficiency.
As far as the use of new technology is concerned, significant differences be-
tween the companies in Eastern and Western Germany can not be found. Also
POHL states that the capital fund has been largely replenished (2002, p. 4).
Confining the discussion only to those companies that have managed to sur-
vive the enormous transformation process in the past and to those companies
which have been founded subsequently is not sufficient. POHL emphasises a
`gap of enterprises´ in Eastern Germany taking Western Germany as a
benchmark (2002, p. 3). A higher number of knowledge intensive firms is
needed in Eastern Germany in order to reach a level of innovation activities as
a whole that can be compared to that in Western Germany.
Even if the existing companies are on their way to improvement in competitive-
ness - and their commitment to R&D is a good sign of this - the founding of
new enterprises is necessary in order to strengthen the economy in Eastern
Germany. Whether or not the R&D co-operation can be an appropriate instru-
ment to solve these problems will now be discussed.
4. The role of R&D co-operations in the German innovation system
The government puts a lot of effort into the support of the involvement and the
creation of R&D facilities in Germany. Thereby governmental subsidies are
also provided for those companies that want to join a R&D co-operation. Pro-
Inno is a nationwide programme and InnoRegio a programme explicitly created
for Eastern German states (BMBF/BMWI 2001, p. 31). For the further analyses
the following questions will be answered:
• How eminent is the R&D co-operation among companies?
• Can differences be stated between companies in Eastern and Western
Germany?
• Who are the potential partners for companies?
• How is the success of these companies to be rated and does that give us
an indication as to how to evaluate the political programmes?
Little more than a quarter of all companies included in the examination partici-
pate in R&D co-operations (28.7 %). The use of this external knowledge re-
source has become an important instrument in innovation management. These
sorts of co-operations range from periodical interactions to sharing knowledge