About Baden-Württemberg - Research and Innovation
Baden-Württemberg is the region with the greatest powers of innovation in the EU. This is the result of a study published by the State Office for Statistics together with the "Stuttgarter Zeitung" in November 2006. The south-west has therefore maintained its leading position established by the preceding study of the year 2004.
Baden-Württemberg spends 4.4 % of its gross domestic product on research and development. This is the highest figure in the European Union, even ahead of Sweden with 3.6% and Finland with 3,5%, followed by Berlin with 3.4%. The average research intensity rate of the 27 EU countries is around 1.9% - the average figure for the German federal states is around 2.5%.
Baden-Württemberg is one of the regions of Europe which may lay claim to the highest number of universities and colleges and the most intensive research activity. It has a sophisticated and highly developed research infrastructure in which the fields of fundamental research and application-oriented research with close links to industry are equally represented, and which is supplemented by a broad and intricate system of transfer institutes.
The Land has 9 universities, 2 private universities, 6 universities of education, 8 art colleges, 21 universities of applied sciences (15 of them with a technical orientation), 7 internally administered and 10 private colleges and 8 vocational academies, which are also considered part of the higher education system.
11 of the 80 Max Planck Institutes, 14 of the 57 Fraunhofer Institutes and 25% of the research capacity of the institutions of the Helmholtz Society, including the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg, are based in the Land. A total of over 100 non-university research facilities in Baden-Württemberg maintain links with the Land's universities through a wide range of activities. More than 300 transfer centres of the Steinbeis Foundation in Baden-Württemberg consider their main sphere of competence to be the implementation of research results from the universities in industry through development projects, consultancy and training. The Steinbeis Transfer Centres are clustered predominantly at universities of applied sciences, but also increasingly at universities.