Characteristics of the German Innovation Policy in the Age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution : Under Special Consideration of Industry 4.0

This paper deals with the characteristics of German innovation policy at the edge of the fourth industrial revolution. The focus here is on Industry 4.0, which is based on the research collaboration of the German Federal Government and a project of the same name in the high-tech strategy of the Federal Government. This paper examines whether German innovation policy already took a sociopolitical aspect of the policy such as mass unemployment into account in the development and design of new technologies in the context of the fourth industrial revolution. Above all, the relevance between the special features of the German innovation system and the characteristics of the Indirect 4.0 is analyzed. Particularly, the type of market economy as general conditions of the system of innovation is illuminated. The German innovation system is strong when it comes to the development of already existing knowledge and its implementation in high-quality goods and services. Furthermore, the characteristics of the industry as a German innovation policy in the age of the fourth industrial revolution lie in the fact that the problem dimensions are already taken into account in the development and design of new technologies to counteract a serious mistaken development in terms of unemployment, growth and the environment.