Germany's Race to Catch Up in the Startup World

SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: Although it is a business powerhouse, Germany's economy is dominated by pre-internet companies. Now the country is realizing that if it wants to remain strong, it needs to create the next Google -- and reinvent the way its entrepreneurs work.

Nikolai Ennslen and Andrija Feher aren't much for false modesty. When the two students decided to start a company, they knew that they wanted it to be big -- really big. "The sky is the limit," says Ennslen today, seven years later.

And there's still room to grow. They recently moved their company, Synapticon, and its 45 employees to new headquarters in a nondescript building in Schönaich outside Stuttgart. There, they develop intelligent control systems for robots. Their goal, Ennslen and Feher say, is to make "Synapticon inside" as self-evident for robotics as "Intel inside" is for computers.

Are these delusions of grandeur? Or is this precisely the entrepreneurial spirit Germany urgently needs? » | Martin Hesse, Armin Mahler and Ann-Kathrin Nezik | Monday, March 27, 2017