Bosch, a German company that serves the auto manufacturers, seems to have bought patents on a battery technology that could be a breakthrough. Remember that 'the German way' of doing business is not to make noise at all. There have been entire German companies operating without marketing and sales departments, and there still are.
Google for "hidden champions". That's the name given to many of the companies that are actually world & technology leaders in their respective markets but that are unknown even to most people in Germany.
I love the way Germans use that word, which is the equivalent of Small and Medium-sized Entreprises in the U.S. (I'm from Algeria, it's PME here).
I was watching a segment on these companies the other day that addressed the importance of small companies, which constitute the backbone of the German economy. They took one such small company and chatted with its founder. He started talking numbers and I believe he said his small company builds tunnel boring machines and had a turnover of about 5 billion euros.
They also mentioned how they're not worried about China because Chinese companies mass produce stuff using German machinery. And how German companies make "the thing that goes into the thing that goes into the thing". Anyway, it was of course an oversimplified CNN-MSNBC-like segment, but it's interesting to see what they consider small company.
> They took one such small company and chatted with its founder. He started talking numbers and I believe he said his small company builds tunnel boring machines and had a turnover of about 5 billion euros.
I think it's more useful to think of innovation as a continuous process instead of something static. Following that line of thinking, even if your competitor is be able to fully replicate your product, he will still be unable to follow your pace of innovation. In addition, the services and expertise around a given product are usually as important as the product itself, and harder to replicate than the product.
>In addition, the services and expertise around a given product are usually as important as the product itself
Exactly. A friend and I were chatting (he's a dental surgeon) and it came up that in dental care, many things that cost in the 2-4k in the US or Europe cost about 200 bucks here (Algeria) - same techniques, same materials, same hygiene standards, etc -.
Naturally, I asked him why there weren't people flocking from Europe (it's about 100 euros round trip from here). He said that even if dental care is cheap, everything around it sucks. He said that neighboring countries built the infrastructure to allow this to be possible (specialized resorts that have deals with clinics, etc). Tourism is thought with this in mind.
He said that if you compare that with our country, there's too much friction for your average European.
On a cost based analysis, it's still worth it. Many Algerians who reside abroad get all their medical/dental care and their children's done here when they visit, but they know the country and have family. They're not in a completely unknown territory.
It's not enough that something is technically possible, there are many parameters (even social parameters) that enter into consideration.
> Naturally, I asked him why there weren't people flocking from Europe (it's about 100 euros round trip from here). He said that even if dental care is cheap, everything around it sucks. He said that neighboring countries built the infrastructure to allow this to be possible (specialized resorts that have deals with clinics, etc). Tourism is thought with this in mind.
> He said that if you compare that with our country, there's too much friction for your average European.
> On a cost based analysis, it's still worth it.
I'll try to explain why this wouldn't be worth it to me, even if it would cost x100 less for dental care.
I'm in Germany, and I'm obliged to pay for a private health insurer provider (almost €300 per month), even though I'm a healthy late twenties individual. It doesn't matter that I barely use medical or dental services at all, I am obliged to pay that by law, even though I just use it for the occasional checkup, getting my teeth cleaned, etc.
I don't care if my dental work costs €5 or €500, my insurance provider picks up the bill. I don't care at all. In this case, the entity using the service and the entity paying the bill are completely separate.
My free time is very limited, I have a full schedule, working full time, social life, gym, hobbies, etc. I don't really have time to take time off for medical tourism to Algeria, I want to enjoy my free time. There is also the perception issue, I have no idea if I can trust anyone there.
Also, I wouldn't compare dental care costs between the US and Europe. From what I've read, the US is in it's own special price category for a lot of things related to dental/medical expenditures. Look at EpiPen fiasco, Turing Pharmaceutical, and many more. That stuff doesn't happen in Canada, Europe, Australia, or if it does its much rarer than in the US.
In that case you are in a lucky situation due to being privately insured. The vast majority in Germany is in the public system which only pays for the most basic of dental care. If you want more eloberate work or better material you need to pay out of your own pocket (which of course is still much less than in the US).
Dental care combined with a vacation in Poland, the Czech Republic, or Hungary is a thriving market. Some health insurers even cooperate with providers abroad and many doctors there speak German.
Similiar, many people opt for eye laser surgery (which you need to completely pay out of pocket) in Turkey or in-vitro fertilization in the Czech Republic (where a wider range of methods are legal).
Yes, the private/public system depends on your income level and I'm lucky that I have the choice. So far I'm fortunate that I don't need much dental work beyond the standard stuff.
I've heard stories from my home country about people going to Poland and other places for dental tourism like you mention, which has the advantage of being in the EU (visa-less travel, some level of trust, likely similar standards).
Whether you become a medical tourist or not likely depends if you are in a public health system or not, and if so, what is covered by the public system and how much you must pay out of pocket to make the travel cost-effective.
Well, they do that because their circumstances might be different from yours. It only makes sense that different people have different needs, or fulfill the same need by different means.
I don't think China can't build the technology. The most known brands in industrial robots for example are the Swiss ABB and the German KUKA. These are ubiquitous (even in the U.S.) the same way Siemens (German) is in Programmable Logic Controllers. So I don't think it's a matter of being unable to make it, maybe the comparative advantage lies somewhere else.
You can look things up by country, by product, etc. What country exports to what other country, and what does it export or import. There's also the "economic complexity index" of each country. Pretty neat.
As I said in my previous comment, I don't think that China can't. It's a launch capable country and I think it's safe to assume that if they're launching rockets and and putting stuff into orbit, tunnel boring machines are well within their adjacent possible.
We're talking about a nation that had ships 450 feet long and 150 feet wide 600 years ago. If Noah was real, he was probably Chinese, lived in the 15th century, and the animal pairs he took with him were fast robotized arms from Germany.
Wouldn't that have more to do with the company serving businesses rather than consumers, and so have less need for general brand awareness, and focus their sales and marketing efforts entirely differently?
I have done IT consulting for a company like this. Even though they were the world market leader they were so low profile that the CEO would usually pick up the phone when I called them.
There was no big secret behind it. It's just that their whole market was like 20 companies worldwide served by maybe 7 providers of which 2-3 actually counted.
A friend worked for the market leader in "rivets and rivet punching machines", and they did very little/no marketing from what he said. They didn't seem to understand the web at all, or maybe it simply didn't matter, as much as that sounds like heresy on HN. They had a huge contract with a household name German car company, and the rest of their sales with from a catalogue sold directly to smaller manufacturers. There's countless German companies like this, scattered all over Germany. If you're in a particular industry, you likely know the highest quality manufacturer in your segment, and there's a good chance that it's a German company.
Nope, sorry. This was an informal conversation with a German friend. He probably doesn't know for sure what patent this is. It's not something that is on the news.
They are not large. Maybe a hundred employees, eight digit revenue and very few products. In the south-west you see them at every corner, relying on word of mouth and the occasional trade fair. But they mostly have someone working on that full time nowadays.
In line with the topic I'd like to plug Mennekes (which does have a small public relations department and is larger than the companies mentioned above). They supply plugs for practically every electric car.
Or take the Walterwerke, making machines for Ice Cream Cones, and being the global leader in that industry.
50 employees, tiny amount of machines they produce, but without them, the world would be far worse as everyone could only eat ice cream in those tasteless paper-like ice cream cones.
I live in Germany.